


one's worth (RC's D&D main campaign oneshots)

by RaisingCaiin



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Multi, One Shot Collection, Snapshots, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2019-10-11 12:58:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 35,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17447423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: A series of oneshots written for ongoing D&D campaign and original characters(first chapter is table of contents and content warnings)





	1. table of contents

**Author's Note:**

> Series of oneshots written for a homebrew D&D campaign created and run by Erlkoenig! More credits for their characters in table of contents (chapter 1)
> 
> Now complete, next collection includes all fics written post-campaign

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> table of contents: titles, summaries, ratings

1\. table of contents: you are here!

2\. _"nearly lost"_ (gen): first-person PoV, kaeh talking to brel 

3. _"such a simple thing"_ (M): kaeh visits Ye Olde Adult Shoppe

4.  _"above us only sky"_ (M): first kaeh and brel banter

5\. _"and to the wild rushes i came by and by"_ (gen): au!future fic after campaign

6.  _"leaf water and bean juice"_ (M): the night after getting together the first time

7.  _"rush"_ (M): after a big battle with fey bounty hunter

8.  _"all shall fade"_ (M): morbid what-if 

9. _"a god to a non-believer"_ (gen): apology to NPC after being paranoid *again*

10.  _"devoted"_ (gen): the first time kaeh has prayed in over a century

11.  _"stille nacht"_ (gen): au!future fic after campaign

12.  _untitled_ (M): first-person PoV after kaeh messes up *again*

13.  _"under cover of darkness"_ (E): AU!future fic after campaign

14\. " _the santhoven cadets_ " (T): kaeh finds brel about to go out for the evening 

15\. " _oh hey, i had a night i had a day_ " (M): AU!future fic; kaeh prepares a surprise bath for brel 

16\. " _every time, just like the last_ " (E): after kaeh murdered an NPC (cw: suicidal ideation) 

17\. " _it's the eye of the morvudd, and the thrill of the fight_ " (gen): multiclassing as a barbarian on the road back

18\. _un_ _titled_ (E): AU!future fic after campaign; kaeh makes a home of sorts and brel stays the night

19.  _"dirty"_ (E): AU!future fic after campaign; negotiating boundaries and dirty talk

 

 

** Characters:  **

Adaire, Brelyeis, Elias, Lhalo Mourninglight, Voran, Bontemp, and Riel all appear courtesy of @erlkoenig; Moth, Raf, and Nikusha were created by @thulimo; Mort stems from the brain of @kris-why; River is @luescense's. 

. . . which means Kaeh is all mine, and I have no excuses for him. 


	2. nearly lost (gen)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written April 14, 2018

You need to wake up. We need to talk.

. . .

Mmm. That sounded bad, and I am – well, no, I can’t really say that I’m sorry. We _do_ need to talk to you: find out what is happening with the council, and with your eyes, figure out what sodding connection you could possibly have with the Feywilds, and ancient relics, and old kings who can raise the dead.

But, ai, all of that – all of that is beyond me, so so utterly far beyond me. Rafail seems to understand some of it, and that is lucky – maybe she will know what to do with her uncanny new book, when more words become clear? Her former lover seemed very excited about it, I don’t know why. But I cannot push there: I’ve learned my lesson well enough. Some scholars can be trusted, on some things.

One thing I do understand, though, more clearly than I would like, and that is the matter of a bounty. You must have heard the rumors, that a tiefling and a halfling and an elf burned several villages to the ground, but that wasn’t us. I don’t know why you have not set a price upon our heads, but – you must not do it. We will all die, if you do: now that we are actually here, we will not be able to flee far enough, fast enough.

So. I am intimately familiar with what pleases the proud, chancellor, and much of it involves seeing others’ pride bend before them. Is that what you like? I do not know, but if that is what you demand, when you wake tomorrow, then you shall have it.  

And I imagine – no, I know that this price must be taken from me. For to fight is one thing, and we did that, and it was glorious, and gods I have not felt so alive in a long time as I did when your magic caught me up alongside your enemy and I did not know if I would live or die and so I could only laugh.

. . . speaking of, why did you apologize to me when you struck? I failed: I could not move quickly enough.  It was nothing to do with you and nothing to do with me: fate’s dice fall as they will, and if I had died, it was my just due for my failure. Then too, you have no stakes in me beyond the price you paid for my arms. What were you sorry for?

But to return – an honest fight is one thing. An uneven one, as we had afterwards, is quite another.

How do I know? From long, bitter experience. But also: because _that is why I first hated you._

Because I thought that you had trapped me. Because I saw this as you sending me somewhere I was unwilling to go, and I had no say in what was done to me.

And now –

How the world turns, chancellor, for now I have done the exact same to you. And if you are as proud as I am, I imagine, then you will not forgive me.

It has taken me this long to even consider forgiving you, after all. And all for something that, the more I learn, you might not even have done.

Now, I told myself tonight with every strike and every step that it was for your own good. You were bleeding out, and the entire capital was caught up in the spell that almost prevented me from finding you. I thought I knew what was best, and so I acted, even when you told me you knew better. And when I did not listen, you struck me – provoked – and I struck back, though I knew you were weakened.

Gods but you were beautiful, in that half-second of shock. Gods but I want to see that again, and again, and again.

I imagine I will not.

I imagine you will demand the price of your pride from me tomorrow, and that –

That is fair. Not all play as I do, and more, we were not playing, but fighting over who knew the best way to save your life. I still think that I was right, but – I suppose we will find out, when you wake up. And if you do not simply kill us all when you regain your senses to find yourself bound and laid out upon your back, with the breathing of strangers surrounding you.

Here. Right here, right now, you shall have the first piece of your pride returned to you: _please._ Please, do not strike when you wake. I have seen, now, what you are capable of, and the others do not deserve that.

But between you and I? If you want a fairer fight from me, then you shall have it. Gods. . . if I had the chance to wrestle you still and pin you beneath me for real, than I would take it. If there were a way to hear you gasping again, and this time not because you were in pain, or at least any more pain than you had dared me to deal you. . .

Ai. That is not the road I meant to go with this, not tonight. What I meant to say is that, if you wake and you want your due from me for what I did –

Well. I will not be happy about it, chancellor. But it is your right, and I will accept it.  

I feel quite the fool, stretched out here in the early-morning dark of a pretty inn room, muttering to an insensate man while my companions sleep. No doubt I look that fool, too, and, well – if you could only see me, chancellor, then I am sure you would laugh, for I have not been able to keep my eyes from you long.

Gods but you are a pretty thing.

But that’s not really all you are, is it.

I look forward to meeting him, whoever this chancellor really is – even, I suppose, if it turns out that he truly is the same lord I remember from the Badger so many weeks ago. This time, I hope, I will be wary enough that I know you will push me, and this time, instead of tensing, I will simply push back.

And if you turn away – well. That is all right, too.

You were nearly lost yesterday, and so was I. I am simply grateful that that didn’t quite come to pass, and now I also have today.

 


	3. such a simple thing (M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written April 20, 2018

Of the three of them, Kaehlan is the one who will be the least recognizable from the wrongful descriptions of the arsonists, and so the others entrust him with nearly sixty gold pieces and ask him to buy more supplies before they have to flee the city.

It’s a sign of how far they’ve come that he doesn’t even hesitate. Instead, as he heads out, he’s just glad to do what he can.

Or maybe it’s also a sign of his distraction. After all, the chancellor of Santhoven himself is lying bound and senseless in the single room they’d paid for, after Kaehlan carried him across nearly half the city. And that ring from Adaire seemed to either have had a mind of its own, or worse, to be able to sense its wearer’s, for after disguising Kaehlan as a guard long enough to get into the capital in the first place, it had then hidden the chancellor in the guise of a tavern whore when Kaehlan had carried him out of the capital after the attack.

The ruse had worked - he hadn’t been stopped once, especially once he reached the salvages - but it had been a shock and a half every time Kaehlan had looked down and seen who he _seemed_ to be carrying, and then had to try and reconcile this picture with who he was _really_ carrying. Luckily the glamor or the charm or whatever it was had worn off just as he reached the Badger, and his friends had only _(only?!?!)_ had to deal with the shock of Kaehlan having kidnapped the chancellor of Santhoven.

No, the picture of low-slung trousers on pale hips and a loose-throated shirt gaping around a pale neck were all Kaehlan’s burden to bear, and serve him right.

Damn the ring, damn the assassins, damn everything.

Kaehlan tries not to let the memory distract him, though, as he picks out the supplies that Morton and Rafail have requested - traveler’s fare, more medicines - but neither the worry about being roughly dressed in a nicer part of town nor the relatively simple task of purchasing these goods is enough to drive those images from his mind. So he turns instead to the battle, and frets over whether he could have done anything differently, or worse, whether the chancellor would have survived if Kaehlan had simply left him there.

(He still doesn’t think so. At the time, the moon elf had been bleeding out, and Kaehlan had had no way of knowing who else in the capital was complicit in the attack.)

(He also tries not to think about the spell that had snatched up Kaehlan himself as well as the last assassin, but - that effort quickly proves a failure too.)

So Kaehlan is distracted, even after he’s purchased enough supplies to last the four of them some time and new clothes for the chancellor to replace his bloodstained robes.

And maybe that distraction is why he detours toward the leather-worker’s shop that he spots on his way back to the inn and the others.

The melodious tinkle of the shop bell brings him back to his senses, so it’s almost a relief to see that it’s just a conventional shop with the usual offerings: bridles, saddles, and assorted tack for horses along one wall, and finer worked goods like satchels along most of the rest. Even the belts have holes and buckles, and are obviously just intended to hold up clothing. The shopkeeper himself, an older human man who greets Kaehlan politely and without any of the scrutiny he’d expect in more, erm, _specialized_ shops, also could not be more mundane if he was trying.

Kaehlan returns the greeting with relief. He’ll browse for a few minutes, he decides, so that he doesn’t raise any suspicions, and then he’ll make a quick getaway and forget about the whole mad impulse that drove him here.

This plan is utterly dashed by the sound of his name, cried with obvious delight in a voice that he hasn’t heard in years. “Kaehlan!”

He turns just in time to be hit with an enthusiastic armful of half-elf, and Kaehlan stumbles back beneath the assault, trying to keep them both from tumbling to the floor in the middle of the shop. He’s already laughing, though - some things just don’t change. “Alesander?”

“Last I checked,” the younger man confirms, pulling back just far enough that he can beam up at Kaehlan. The years have been good to him, and the poxes that sometimes swept the makeshift camps obviously never caught up with him, and his smile is just as sunny now as it was when Kaehlan first met him in the south. It’s an odd, soft punch in the gut to see someone from his old life here, when Kaehlan has recently been caught up in so much newer, stranger intrigues.

So he returns the half-elf’s hug late but just as fondly. “What are you doing in the city? You’ve given up your old trade to apprentice to a saddler?”

Alesander scoffs, still smiling. “As if. No, I help with the, umm, other side of the business. Speaking of - if I know anything about you at all, there’s no way that you came here looking for tack. John! John! Kaeh is here for the other stock. I can vouch for him. I’m taking him upstairs!”

Now the older man does scrutinize Kaehlan more closely, but eventually he nods. Alesander, still beaming, pulls away from the embrace to tug Kaehlan towards a small staircase he hadn’t noticed before, hidden behind a tall stand displaying coils of belts.

“Upstairs?” Kaehlan asks with some amusement, but he follows where he’s tugged even when the staircase is dark and narrow, the stairs creaking with more force than he’s really comfortable with.  

“Well, not everyone appreciates Niane’s work, even here in the city, and we’d actually been run out of a few other storefronts before John let us set up shop here,” Alesander says, and the excitement in his voice is palpable. “But in the end, it worked out perfectly! We can vet people before we let them up - that’s part of my job, actually - and just like you did, a leather-worker’s is going to be the first place that folks come looking for this kind of gear, so we don’t even have to draw attention to ourselves, just watch-”

The younger man has obviously landed on his feet, and it’s good to see him happy. Kaehlan is just about to tell him so when suddenly the tight staircase ends and Alesander precedes him into a well-lit upper room that -

Oh.

“Niane!” Alesander is saying cheerfully, darting across the room to greet the orc woman behind a counter in the corner, but Kaehlan can’t quite even return the curious look or hesitant wave that the craftswoman offers him over Alesander’s continued chattering. He’s a little too busy staring.

For all that this upper room is more sparsely stocked than the main store downstairs, nearly everything in it shares at least the same materials as the saddles, the tack, and the satchels that the human man is offering for sale. But here. . .

Kaehlan’s earlier resolve to just look around the leather-worker’s goods and then leave is wavering fast. The wares here are far more tempting - typically he has had to make do with tent-rope and his own shirt sleeves. But now there’s a little gold that’s suddenly burning a hole in his pocket, even if there’s currently no one he’d be buying gifts for, and-

The memory of low-slung light trousers is sudden enough, palpable enough, that Kaehlan actually has to put a hand against the wall to hold himself upright.

“Overwhelming, isn’t it?” Alesander calls; the orc craftswoman, obviously used to his boundless enthusiasm, simply shakes her head.

“Go ahead and look, touch.” Niane’s voice is low and amused. “But please, tell us first if there is anything that you want to try.”

“Mmmm.” Hopefully that sounds enough like agreement, because Kaehlan isn’t sure he can say anything more coherent quite yet. He shakes his head sharply, trying to dispel the image that had hit him so hard - _it wasn’t even real, it hadn’t even been there at all_ \- and resolves to take a look at Niane’s work, just so that he knows what’s available the next time he’s in Santhoven.

Then something catches his eye.

The piece is simple enough - a strap of brown leather with a buckle and holes at its back, and a large, plain ring of metal at its center.

When he lifts it from its place, the pads of his fingers, rough with callouses, almost cannot register how fine the leather is: the strap is sturdy, but already pliable, not so stiff that it will need much breaking in. The ring, brass polished to a mirror’s sheen, is utterly smooth, and warms quickly at his touch; the buckle, though well-crafted, is easily loosened, and the holes through which its tooth are to be put are wide enough that they allow for some stretch.

Kaehlan’s mind is racing, but the calculations are easily run. Even with the buckle to adjust its size, the whole piece is too small for a waist and too large for a wrist, and the ring itself is too large and too plain for an ornament.  

This beautiful piece with its masterful workmanship is intended to fit a face. The ring is meant to slip inside a mouth, and to keep it open wide; the buckles mean that the one who is wearing it must have help to release it.  

And it would restrict the teeth, but not the tongue. And it might obstruct speech, but it could not obstruct sound.

He must make some sound himself, because the low conversation between Alesander and Niane over by the counter stops. “Kaeh?” he can hear the half-elf ask, with some concern, but there is nothing he could possibly say to either of them right now. Not with this beautiful thing in his hands.

The ring accommodates three fingers easily, and when he twists them so that one lies beneath the others, four. And for all that it is empty, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture a mouth held open and gasping behind it.  

“Kaeh?” Alesander’s footsteps wander back to his side. “What is - oh. Oh, good choice. Mmm, Kaeh.” The half-elf’s fingers enter Kaehlan’s range of vision as he reaches for the piece. “You know how this works? I can, umm, model it for you.”

“No. It’s fine.” He relinquishes the piece to Alesander’s hands, ignoring the younger man’s sound of disappointment, and looks to Niane instead. “If you have another of these in black, with a silver ring, I’ll buy it. Right now.”

He tries not to think about why the difference in color would be important. It’s probably just, erm, a preference.

But Niane appraises him as if she knows better.”The brown one is ten gold. One that is black and silver will be twenty.”

A simple difference in color shouldn’t matter that much that Kaehlan even considers this. Particularly when there’s no one he can even offer such a gift to. And that is a great deal of gold, nearly a fourth of what Kaehlan has left to his name.

“That’s fine.” And it is - if anything, the black and silver piece that Niane produces for his consideration is even more beautiful than the first one he saw, but Kaehlan would have gravitated toward it even if it had been otherwise the same.

Alesander’s eyes are wide as Kaehlan counts out the coin. He says nothing, but they are both aware that Kaehlan has never had this much coin before, and that Kaehlan was never able to purchase him anything as fine as this.

“He is lucky, whoever he is,” Alesander finally says softly, when Niane has accepted the coin and is wrapping the piece.

“No,” Kaehlan tells him, just as quiet. He might as well admit this - to Alesander, to Niane, to himself - that maybe there is someone he has in mind, even if that case is hopeless. “If he would accept it, I would be the lucky one.”

 


	4. above us only sky (M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written April 21, 2018

One moment, Rafail is alive, and gasping for breath in a cocoon of light spun by Brelyeis’s hands, and 

_ (Kaehlan only knows this because he’s experiencing much the same)  _

The next her head has been slashed clean from her body, and the fey who killed her is staring down in shock as if they hadn’t expected a drawn blade would do any fucking damage let alone kill an inoffensive adventurer, and Kaehlan could happily rip a few organs out of them for  _ daring disrespect her and their own weapon that way  _

_ (how could they) _

One moment, they’re huddled by the riverside - he and Mort and  the chancellor Brelyeis - making what broken good-byes they can, and a washer-woman is making cryptic statements about losses yet to come, and 

_ (and Kaehlan snaps, because he always does, and the washer-woman looks up and meets his eyes and she is not a washer-woman after all, is she)  _

The next, they’re wading out across the river as fast Brelyeis can urge them to wade, because the woman is actually another of the fey and maybe that was actually Rafail’s blood she was washing out of a shroud and there’s certainly one more on the bank so maybe she has the power to kill one of them too

_ (the things Kaehlan doesn’t understand would fill a book that he then couldn’t read, and still he insists on acting like he knows better)  _

One moment, Brelyeis is sitting painfully upright beside a small fire and Mort is speaking to his lover and pouring out his heart about losing Rafail and that’s good, because it’s painful but it will help him heal and Kaehlan couldn’t have done that for him in the ways that his Adaire will be able to, and 

The next, Mort has come to sit heavily beside them, and Brel has sat bolt upright, insisting that a new voice can’t join them, it’s not safe, he’s not to come. But the voice’s name is the one that Brelyeis whispered when he finally surfaced from his last deep shock,  _ Moth _ , and Kaehlan is glad to hear that it’s a kind voice, full of strength and affection and concern for Brelyeis’s well-being, and gladder still to see that Brelyeis is finally speaking again, it’s been almost a day of full silence and Kaehlan was growing worried for the invisible contents of that silence. . . And then Brelyeis is nodding off against his shoulder and Kaehlan maybe breaks his trust to tell this Moth where they are and wish the other man speed and safety in finding them, but he can’t do anything less: maybe Brelyeis doesn’t want him here, but then again maybe this Moth will be able to help Brelyeis in a way that Mort  and Rafail and Kaehlan so far have not. 

Brelyeis certainly seems to think so, for no sooner has he spoken with his Moth than his entire body loses much of its tension. And, for want of a better option, he slumps against Kaehlan. 

Kaehlan is - not quite sure why he’s being trusted now, after how little he’d been able to do previously, but Brelyeis is warm and Kaehlan lacks the strength to remind him that he’d be better off leaning on someone else. 

Tomorrow, maybe. When his Moth gets here. 

All in all, it’s one moment after another after another after another until the whole day has gone, and by now, when night has fallen, Kaehlan knows that there will be no sleep for him. And that’s all right: this is how it goes, after a skirmish. He’s used to it. He usually walks the adrenaline off, and wrestles a little more than usual with vague notions of the gods, and makes all kinds of embarrassing pleas to whoever might be listening that whoever had been lost in the skirmish will find the justice or peace or love or whatever it is that they most wanted and so deserve. 

_ (Except that tonight he couldn’t say with certainty what it is that Rafail would most want, and isn’t that a fucking knife to the heart, well done Kaehlan)  _

_ (and gods but that bastard will pay for her death, and yes, Kaehlan is aware that he says things to this effect about payment all the time but he’s also never made such a promise without meaning every word of it)  _

A slight shudder from Brelyeis runs through his shoulder, but when Kaehlan looks down of course he can’t see his eyes: his poor scratched eyelids and the empty sockets they now protect are hidden from beneath a torn scrap of blue bedsheet. 

It’s hard to tell if Brelyeis is sleeping, and there’s not much Kaehlan can do besides encourage him to take some rest while he can, but also - Kaehlan has seen enough of the damage his fool words have done today, thank you very much. But also - he has to do  _ something _ . 

He settles for reaching up with his right hand - Brelyeis has settled against his left shoulder - and running his fingers feather-light across that shining hair. 

Just once, and with as soft and light a stroke as he can manage. And when it is done, his hand comes to rest at the tips of that hair where it falls at Brelyeis’s back. 

It’s a risk. There’s no telling whether Brelyeis will suffer any touch right now, let alone Kaehlan’s, and there’s certainly no telling whether he will take this particular touch as the comfort that Kaehlan intends it to be. Kaehlan is aware that he may need to snatch his hand back at any time, and still there is no certainty -  

But then, with a sound so soft Kaehlan cannot even be sure that he actually hears it, Brelyeis leans into the touch. 

And that is enough. That is more than enough. Kaehlan is lost. 

He shifts, just a little, and resumes another stroke, just as slow but a little heavier this time, and dares to actually dip his fingers into the soft light strands as they run down the fine curve of Brelyeis’s skull. When there is still no sign of question or protest, he does this again, and again, and again, until it feels that most of Brelyeis’s full weight has come to lean against his side. 

Good. Kaehlan is mostly relieved that  _ something _ worked - it is best that Brelyeis falls asleep while he is still in this slightly elevated mood, or else he will risk facing that same full weight of shock and melancholy when he wakes. And if, in the course of providing him comfort, Kaehlan also has an acceptable reason to marvel at the soft smoothness of this beautiful hair - well, then. Lucky chance, and all that. 

The fire is starting to die down, and the night is clear, freckled with a wild scattering of unfamiliar stars. Brelyeis will not be able to see them, of course, but  _ (and maybe this is the most abject nonsense, Kaehlan wouldn't know, he doesn’t know enough about anything) -  _ but maybe Brelyeis will be able to feel their light. Or at least know that it is out there. Above them. As far away and untouchable by their troubles as Kaehlan finds himself hoping that someday Brelyeis himself can be. 

But this is a bit of sentimental nonsense, and he’s not going to ask. Not if Brelyeis is finally, finally drifting off to sleep. 

What else beyond stroking his hair could send him off, Kaehlan wonders. Not more words, and especially not when all the words that come most easily to his mind right now are either wonder for Brelyeis’s strength  _ (the other might not believe him, not now, not with Rafail’s death, even though Kaehlan knows that they all would have died if not for Brelyeis)  _ or else admiration for his beauty  _ (and that would probably be even more unwelcome now, as Kaehlan doesn’t know if the other has truly accepted the loss of his eyes or would think that Kaehlan is aiming for a quick tumble and so is just flattering him into rolling over). _

But when his brain is engaged elsewhere his mouth seems to work well enough, because before Kaehlan knows it, he has started to hum. His fingers, still stroking gently through that fine hair, settle easily into the tune, and soon enough it’s easier to continue than it is to stop. 

It’s an old song, and one that Kaehlan hasn’t actually heard played or sung in years and years and years, but it suits the occasion well enough. It’s a marching song ( _ and mark that down for another thing that Kaehlan doesn’t know enough of - ‘songs to comfort the battle-shocked’ - for all that he does know are war cries and marching tunes and tavern ditties and laments for the homecoming _ ), but it slows down well enough, and if one doesn’t know the words  _ (Kaehlan knows all the words) _ , then it might even sound soothing. 

And so he hums it for Brelyeis, a simple song that imagines a world where marching is no longer needed because folk live for the present and have realized that crowns are not worth fighting for. 

As he works his way through the stanzas, he begins to lean back - slowly, carefully, intending to stretch out across his back so that Brelyeis is lying prone and will be able to sleep without a stiff spine in the morning. It takes nearly two stanzas to go as slowly as he does, and the muscles of his stomach are unhappy with the burn by the time he makes it all the way down, but Brelyeis has followed the move without complaint, so Kaehlan will count this as a win. 

And then it’s time for the last stanza of the song, the one where the singer is supposed to realize a vision of peacetime. And although this must not sound any different to Brelyeis - just another iteration of the four that have come before it - the vision of peacetime strikes Kaehlan himself particularly hard tonight. 

He can’t imagine peace for himself, and he’s never been particularly interested in trying - what does peace have to offer him but starvation? He’s never done much else in his life but fight. 

But tonight, with Brelyeis’s hair beneath his hand and Rafail’s blood probably staining his shirt and Mort’s low voice away from the fire as he speaks with his lover - Kaehlan can imagine what peacetime would mean for them.

Well. What it would mean for Brelyeis and Mort, that is. And Adaire. Even Brelyeis’s Moth. 

_ (hopefully Rafail has found her own peacetime, or whatever equivalent she would prefer instead)  _

And that is enough. 

The tune trails off into the crisp clear quiet of the evening, even as Mort finally returns, offering a gruff good-night before pitching his tent and disappearing into its depths. But Brelyeis’s breathing is even against Kaehlan’s chest, and there’s no pressing reason for him to pitch his own, so he remains where he is. And when his right hand tires of stroking Brelyeis’s hair, he lets it fall to the grass at his side, and his left takes up the duty. 

He isn’t sure how much time passes this way, but it cannot have been more than a single watch of the night when Brelyeis startles awake.

It’s heartbreaking to watch. No one comes awake that quickly - that quietly and that utterly - unless their lives have been at risk from sudden sound or movement. And he doesn’t know Brelyeis’s entire story, but he doesn’t think this elf has ever been a soldier. 

_ (if this is another legacy of the old master that Brelyeis had admitted to in the Underdark, then Kaehlan will - well, no, he doesn’t know what he will do besides pant in inadequate fury. He hasn’t had much luck against fey thus far, has he now) _

But Kaehlan has this mantra down by now. “You’re safe. We’re not in Santhoven anymore.” 

He continues to stroke his hair until he realizes that this might no longer be welcome now that the other is fully awake. But his left hand is more stubborn than his right, and won’t just fall to the grass like its twin did. Instead, it lingers just at the back of Brelyeis’s head - not holding him in place or presuming its welcome, but  just a light support to tell Brelyeis that Kaehlan won’t leave until he’s asked to. 

Unlike the way he’d awoken the previous two days though, Brelyeis is silent now. And he’s always been so composed, so ready with some cutting assessment or intelligent question first thing upon waking, that to have him so quiet now is - concerning. Frantically, Kaehlan casts about for a suitable topic. 

“Umm. . . tea. Tell me why you like tea so much?” 

_ (well done, Kaehlan, very intelligent,  _ definitely  _ calculated to raise his opinion of your culturedness)  _

If not for the ragged fold of bedsheet and the empty sockets, he imagines, then Brelyeis would be staring at him with contempt. 

But then, what actually happens instead is this: 

“With the right mug it’s warm to hold, and it usually -  _ usually _ \- keeps me from lunging across tables to strangle unintelligent people.” 

_ What? _

But there’s little time to scramble his senses into anything even faintly resembling order, because Brelyeis is already going on: “And you? You strike me as the black coffee sort.” 

Well, yes, but - why would Kaehlan’s preferences matter to Brelyeis? Confused as hell, Kaehlan decides he’ll play along until he can figure out where this unexpected candidness is going. “Yes, when I can get it.” 

And then his fucking mouth decides that it’s long past time to wreck things. As usual. “I've always thought tea was just warm leaf water - at least coffee will wake you up."

_ (well DONE, Kaehlan, extraordinarily smooth, he’ll never-)  _

“Bean water.” Brelyeis sounds so serious that it takes a moment for Kaehlan to register that he’s actually turning the blunt joke back on Kaehlan. 

And this - this is delightful. 

“Bean water with restorative powers, remember,” he counters, curious to see how far Brelyeis will let him push.”That part’s crucial.” 

Brelyeis stretches a little, and in the process, his chin digs into Kaehlan’s chest. He huffs and resettles himself  _ and that should not be as utterly winning as it is _ . “You haven’t had a real cup of tea then,” he says, but it’s not dismissive - or if it is, the dismissal is obviously of the opinion, and not of Kaehlan himself. “If it doesn’t punch you in the face then it’s not strong enough.”

Kaehlan snorts before he can catch the sound, and Brelyeis’s head cocks inquiringly. 

Might as well, then. 

“I don't need tea for that when I can walk up to anyone and talk to them for two minutes for the same result."

He has never heard Brelyeis laugh before, and it’s - 

It might just be the most toe-curlingly delightful thing that Kaehlan has ever heard in his life. Not charming, not disarming, not melodious, but somewhere in between all three at once, and he knows at once that he needs to hear it again. 

And again and again and again, if he can. 

"See? There. Easy enough. Why waste money on tea?"

And even though this riposte that doesn’t produce quite the same result, what it does produce is delightful in its own separate way, as Brelyeis props his hand on his hands, and his hands on Kaehlan’s chest, and makes a face that is probably meant to signify shock and scandal. 

“I’ve reached the point where I am ready to boil sticks and leaves, Kaeh. I’m desperate.”

Gods  _ damn _ . Kaehlan had never heard Brelyeis laugh before, has never seen him playful before, and  _ has certainly never heard the short form of his own name out of his mouth before _ . 

It’s probably a good thing they’re already lying down, he’s not sure he would have remained standing after that shock otherwise.    
  
His responses grow weaker and weaker as his surprise and exhilaration grow stronger and stronger. “There's desperation and there's  _ desperation, _ though. Sticks and leaves will poke you in the face, but they won't be enough to punch you."

“I’ve got the shakes,” Brelyeis pronounces solemnly, and he’s actually grinning as he lifts his chin long enough to stretch one hand forward, as if for Kaehlan to inspect. 

“Terrible business,” Kaehlan agrees distractedly, capturing that hand in thin air and pulling it forward a little as if he really does intend to check it like a healer would. But instead what he can’t help but notice is that Brelyeis’s fingers are fine and thin and - and for all Brelyeis’s banter, they don’t seem to be shaking much at all. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	5. and to the wild rushes i came by and by (gen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> orig written April 26, 2018

the cottage is far from anything. 

well, no, that’s not quite right, there are some things. the forest edges up right to the borders of moth’s well-kept gardens, for instance, and the cliffs are only a mile or so west down the road. there’s a small village with a weekly market and all unfamiliar but cheerful faces, an easy morning’s walk east; there’s also the road itself, a dirt track whose faintness makes it obvious how very few follow it out this far. 

say rather, than: the cottage is far from anything that has hurt or pursued or betrayed them. 

there’s no council here, no backstabbing poisoners or sudden assassins. no cultists. no fey. from here the world seems so far away, most days, and that’s not a bad thing. 

it’s peaceful. just the forest, the sea, and two men who mean more than either of those. 

~ ~ ~ 

 

brelyeis is the planner. there is nothing, kaehlan thinks, that brelyeis hasn’t read or doesn’t know about; there’s no situation that he hasn’t already considered, and planned for, well before it ever happened. brelyeis is the one who knew of this place, the one who glided into their conversation one day with a stack of papers saying he now owned a cottage by the cliffs, the one who cut off their incredulous protests about costs and logistics to tell them it was already taken care of - the one who pulled the strings that made the three of them disappear. there is nothing that brelyeis couldn’t do if he decided he wanted it done. 

brelyeis is the one who brought them together, the one who saw them through to the end of that mad quest. brelyeis is the one who knows what they will need, and who will make it happen no matter the cost to himself. brelyeis is their beginning. 

moth is the keeper. there is nothing, kaehlan thinks, that moth cannot look at and see the best of, or at least the potential in, the promise of what it could be. after all, that’s what he did with them, wasn’t it, when kaehlan and mort had come barreling into him out of the fog, carrying a newly re-blinded brelyeis and shouting about demon dogs, still bowed beneath the weight of losing rafail. moth hadn’t judged them then; he’d seen what they’d done to try and help, even if they’d botched it up and gotten brelyeis’s eyes lost by falling for fey tricks. and moth doesn’t judge even now, not when brelyeis snaps or kaehlan can't speak of something. moth is the one who’d kept things in order for their disappearance here, making sure that brelyeis would have his tea and his books and that kaehlan had a way to stride out ahead and check for any threats even if of course there wouldn’t be any. 

moth is the one who holds them together. literally - kaehlan and brelyeis fall asleep on top of him as often as not - but also not literally: he is the one who can explain brelyeis’s more obscure references or translate kaehlan’s more frustrated gestures. moth is their glue. 

and kaehlan?

kaehlan doesn’t know what he is in this scheme, or what he could possibly offer the others, but so far they haven’t mentioned this being a problem, so he’s starting to think that it might be all right. 

~ ~ ~

 

brelyeis is gone when kaehlan wakes in the morning, but they’ve already had that scare and that shouting match and that makeup session by now. he wakes early, brelyeis had explained, and sometimes he needs time to think, or enjoy his tea alone, or watch the sun come up, and kaehlan could stop presuming where he should or shouldn’t be alone, thank you very much. moth had accepted the explanation, but kaehlan had doubted - thus, shouting match - and it wasn’t until kaehlan found himself thinking thoughts bigger than usual that he’d understood the appeal. 

so as the sunlight creeps through the window and across the floor kaehlan watches moth’s chest rise and fall for a little while longer before he can tell for certain that it’s one of those mornings when he should follow brelyeis’s example. and when he does, kaehlan presses a kiss to his much beloved pillow and gets up to find enough clothes that he’ll be decent and walks out into the early morning light. 

~ ~ ~ 

 

if it were connections that kaehlan was looking for, then those wouldn’t be hard to find. 

moth, he thinks, is the sea. there’s probably an end to his depths somewhere but why would anyone possibly need to go looking? and more, any roughness or storms in moth are not his own, but come from the world around them riling him up; the calm and the soothed are his natural state. 

brelyeis, kahelan thinks, is the forest. no matter how he might appear to be tamed down or cut away, he will always be there and he will always come back more bent than ever on taking back what was his before. there are wild things in brelyeis that kaehlan wants to hunt and bring down just to understand what they are. 

the forest and the sea, and kaehlan caught quite contentedly between them. but it’s not a need for comparisons that’s driven him out into the morning today, and so he walks on. 

~ ~ ~ 

 

it’s only when he’s already well down the road that the lack of weight at his back and his hip really register, and isn’t that lack of immediate awareness a shock in and of itself. 

he didn’t bring his bow or his quiver. he didn’t think twice about leaving his primary weapons where he couldn’t see them, or where others could most definitely find them. 

and it’s odder still that kaehlan feels only the faintest urge to turn back and get them. it’s even easier to let go now than it had been that day when they’d decided to walk to the market, and halfway there he’d realized that he’d left his longsword behind. brelyeis had laughed that he was growing soft and moth had said happily that maybe kaehlan felt safer now, and it had been surprisingly easy to laugh along and to agree that  _ maybe, yes  _ even though his longsword had always been his first resort. 

things have changed. kaehlan thinks, though, that he won’t ever stop carrying the knives. 

but then, that’s what he’d thought about the bow and the longsword too, and now look where they are - propped up in a corner of the common room where brelyeis won’t need to see tools of war when he first wakes up and moth won’t need to fuss about sharp things being by the bed. 

things have definitely changed. 

~ ~ ~ 

 

the road is more of a footpath by the time it reaches the cliffs, and kaehlan doesn’t have to wander far to find a nice spot to stand and look out over the expanse of sea, shimmering just a little in the early morning light. 

connections, comparisons: the sea before him, and the forest at his side. brelyeis probably seated somewhere around the cottage, already starting his day with his favorite tea, and moth probably still in the bedroom, just now rumbling awake and thinking wistfully about coffee. 

there’s probably a word that describes the feeling that kaehlan feels welling up in his chest when he thinks about them. no, scratch that - there is definitely a word. it’s one that he hears from both of them near daily - from brelyeis as a pet name, and from moth in every way it could ever be used - and it’s one that kaehlan has never been able to force his mouth and his mind to return, even as much as  _ he agrees he agrees he agrees. . .  _

but that’s not something the sea can do for him, nor the forest. nor is it something the sea  _ should  _ do for him, nor the forest. 

that’s something kaehlan can do. something he should do. 

decision forming, he doesn’t even look out over the sea one last time before he’s already turning back toward the road and home. 

 


	6. leaf water and bean juice (M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written April 28, 2018

The next time Kaehlan wakes up, he can’t fall back asleep.

It’s not a bad kind of sleeplessness, more the fucked-boneless-last-night-and-bones-just-growing-back kind of sleeplessness that has always driven him to get up and stretch languidly and assess which parts of his body are most satisfied and why. And this early, early morning is no different, except that definitely more parts are more satisfied than usual. 

But it’s also the only reason why he’s awake before Brelyeis this second morning - and Moth’s sleep patterns seem a little more like his own, to the tune of “get as much as you can while you can and the sun be damned” -  so Kaehlan steals from the room as quietly as he can. 

A little distracted, he only just remembers to snatch a piece of clothing off the floor as he goes. Whatever it is, it seems to have sleeves instead of legs, so he pulls it over his head as he descends the darkened stairs, yawning a little. And although the hem rides up to his stomach when he stretches his arms, it can also be pulled juuuuuuust low enough that he’s probably mostly decent when he puts his arms back down. The back tail is also long enough that the trails down the inside of his thighs probably won’t stand out right away. 

Huh. More’s the pity. But also - not his shirt, then. Moth’s, maybe? 

That‘s - interesting, and for some reason more exciting than he would have expected. 

The rest of the inn is quiet, probably sleeping, and with a quick peek out the common room window before heading to the kitchen, Kaehlan estimates that it’s still a little while before sunrise. Good - that will give him the time to make some unavoidable mistakes about the plan forming in his head before Brelyeis, already proven an early riser, wakes up. 

Because. Brelyeis had brought them both coffee the morning before, and from the startled noises Moth had made, this was not something he’d done much even in the capital. And even if the black silk blindfold (even stringing those three words makes Kaehlan’s mouth run dry, focus man dammit) had obscured much of his brow, it had been easy to imagine Brelyeis furrowing it with concentration, wondering how they would react, wondering if he’d gotten it right. 

Of course he’d gotten it right, and Kaehlan hopes their enthusiasm then had told Brelyeis as much. (Both the enthusiasm about the coffee and about the surprise of it being brought to them and about Brelyeis himself, all three at once. . .) But now Kaehlan also wants to give some of that same feeling back, to both of them. 

Unfortunately, that means learning to make tea, and then actually making tea. 

Somehow. 

Thank all the gods that Moth is another coffee man because if Kaehlan had had to balance making two different kinds of leaf water he’s not sure he could do it, and he would have had to fall back on his secondary plan of waking them up with his lips and his tongue, which he can do,  _ oh he can most definitely do _ , but it seems unfair to make either one wait while the other gets eaten out or gone down on. 

Then there’s a bit of a squeak, and Kaehlan is jerked out of his attempts to resolve this important but unfair conundrum by the sight of the innkeeper, Eryn, crouched by the hearth. It’s obvious she’d been building up the kitchen fire for the day - breakfast at dawn, hadn’t she said - but now she’s simply staring at him in shock. 

What- 

Confused, he follows her gaze down. 

Oh. In the greater light from the unshuttered windows downstairs, it’s definitely Moth’s shirt - richer colors than anything Kaehlan has ever worn, and, probably more noticeable to Eryn’s eye, with larger and longer sleeves than anything Kaehlan actually needs. 

And, erm, no pants. And maybe the trails that Moth had left down his thighs run a little further than Kaehlan initially thought. 

Ah. Oops. 

“So it was you we all heard last night. I thought you four were just traveling together?” she asks, and she still looks shocked as she stands but now there’s a bit of laughter in her voice as well. 

He can’t hide it and he finds with growing surety that he doesn’t want to, dammit, so he might as well own it. Mind made up, he grins at her. “Seemed safest to keep together a little while longer, just in case. And you rented the big man such a nice bed that it seemed a pity not to make use of it.” 

“And it fit four all right?” she asks, laughing a little more even as she tries avoid either meeting his eyes directly or looking anywhere lower than his collar. 

“Just three, but then, that was our choice and not the bed’s doing.” 

She tsks, amused, and lifts a kettle to the hob, and Kaehlan is struck by the realization that  _ oh thank gods _ he might not have to risk messing this up as badly as he’d thought. 

“Did - did you see anyone make tea down here, yesterday morning?” 

She turns to regard him a little curiously. “Maybe. Why?” 

Now Kaehlan is the one who has to turn away a bit, be the one who can’t meet her eyes. “I wanted to make him some, but I don’t know how.” 

Strange, how honesty with strangers comes easier and easier these days. Strange, how he doesn’t even regret revealing his ignorance anymore when he knows what he can gain by doing so. 

Eryn, when he risks a concerned glance back, looks like she wants to pat his shoulder but doesn’t want to touch the shirt out of fear for what might be on it. She settles for a sympathetic if still amused nod, and bustles past him to rummage atop the counters. 

“I think he left some down here yesterday, and there’s also coffee if anyone else abusing my poor big bed prefers that instead. Now, come here and just watch the first time, if you don’t steep it properly then you’ll get a drink that’s too weak or too bitter. . .” 

Eventually, his head spinning with new terms and concerns - who knew that making tea was so damn complicated, coffee would never ask that much effort of a man, even if Eryn had exclaimed with horror after seeing his coffee prep and made him toss the dark brew out so she could make something that wouldn’t “poison you all from the belly out” - Kaehlan makes his way back up the stairs with two mugs. (She’d told him a cup and saucer would be better, but he still has his limits and it seems that using two godsdamn dishes when a man only needed one was one of them.)

And, creeping back into their darkened room to see the others just stirring - to see Brelyeis’s brows peek above the blindfold when he catches the scent of tea, to see Moth’s eyes widen when he notices all that Kaehlan is wearing - would have stifled any complaints, if Kaehlan had even been thinking of voicing any in the first place. 

Which he hadn’t. There is not a damn thing that Kaehlan can complain about in this exact moment, watching two lovers accept warm mugs and knowing that maybe he’s able to offer them just a little more now than he had been last night. 

 


	7. rush (M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written May 8, 2018

at a quiet word from brelyeis mort’s horses rise to their feet without a shake or a stumble, and if they’re quieter now than they had been before the bounty hunter’s last spell, then that’s not kaehlan’s problem or concern. they’re alive (. . . they’re moving, that to kaehlan means alive), and he has other problems and concerns to deal with right now.

brelyeis, for one. who is sitting more quietly than kaehlan would like, but – kaehlan isn’t moth. (kaehlan  _ definitely _ isn’t moth). he doesn’t always know what to say, he’s too plain-spoken, he’ll do anything he can for brelyeis but sometimes that isn’t enough and he would pray if he believed it could help but he can’t, it never has.  

and his own body is another concern over the new-raised horses. kaehlan has to wrestle it back under control – he’s sitting behind brelyeis as they speed away from the scene of the bounty hunter’s defeat, after all, and brelyeis just woke up, there’s no telling what he remembers this time around, and now is not the time for kaehlan’s shenanigans, but. . .

but.

oh,  _ but _ .

he thinks he tells brelyeis what’s happened since they left that accursed town burning, and fled to orwick and found harin, but - kaehlan could hardly say that for sure. he’s a bit – distracted.

it’s not that his nose got broken or that he took a hand axe to the shoulder.

no, it’s everything that followed.

his nose only got broken and his shoulder only got axed because magic got involved  - the bad kind, the kind he’s always hated, the kind that goes for folks’ minds and steals their senses and forces them into doing things. there is nothing,  _ nothing _ , he hates more.  

but no. it’s what happened next that matters.

because kaehlan’s now with folk who recognize when that sort of magic has been flung. who don’t run cowering, when they’ve been hit or they see others hit. who don’t lay blame. who stand up again.

and best of all, who damn well  _ fight back _ .

and today? today, gods damn that bounty hunter, today that especially means  _ moth. _

moth, who took a damned sight more damage in that fairy’s spell than either of the actual fighters – mort and kaehlan. moth, who – despite being crushed and entangled – fired off some kind of counter, bladed darts that ran the fucker through, and whose first thought was for the others who’d been injured rather than himself. who’d run to brelyeis while kaehlan himself had still stood paralyzed.

moth, who broke kaehlan’s nose and then paled when he saw the damage and tried to fix it, taking responsibility for something he didn’t really do, would never really do. who also turned on the enemy that had made him do it and made sure that enemy would never touch brelyeis or kaehlan or mort or anyone ever again.

_ gods damn  _ but the second their feet touch the ground again kaehlan wants moth.

he fights to keep his hands steady, his breathing even, his pants as flat as they’re gonna get – brelyeis, in front of him, doesn’t need this right now on top of whatever else he’s accrued this time around.

and it’s not going to happen, anyway. not yet. moth, he’s seen, needs reassurances, after; as if he really thinks that kaehlan would – that kaehlan  _ could! _ – hold the injury against him. when in reality all kaehlan wants to do is kiss him senseless and push him back on the first bed they find. can’t really breathe through his nose again for a couple days but needing his mouth free doesn’t have to stop him from slicking up that fine cock and feeling it burn all the way all the way down and giving moth a damn good show and hoping it conveys just a few of the things that kaehlan feels bubbling up in the region of his chest and doesn’t have the words like either of his lovers to actually say. . .

but no.

kaehlan will be calm, when they stop. he’ll give the big man a hug, like he’s kind of doing now for brelyeis, and reassure moth again that he’s not really hurt, he’s not angry at all, he’s so fiercely proud and astonished and. . .

and.

if moth doesn’t believe him, then – then gods but kaehlan can only hope that his own belief still shows. there had not been a damn concern in his mind when he pulled out mort’s axe and cleaned it off before handing it back to the halfling; not a  _ damn _ concern in his mind when he absently tweaked his own nose back into place because if moth touched it kaehlan might have had to at least kiss him.

it’s not that kaehlan’s nose is broken. it’s not. he’ll wear the lump, and any scars mort’s ax leaves, and any residue or burns from brelyeis’s battle spells, with pride.

it’s that those things happened, and they weren’t meant to happen, and the folk that did them didn’t run. during, or after.

and that, all that, is worth finding a different way to say what he feels.

. . .

until moth  _ has _ been reassured, and brelyeis recovered, of course.

 


	8. all shall fade (M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written June 18, 2018  
> (what-if, didn't end up happening)

So. This is what it means to lose everything. 

Losing everything, he’s finding out, means more than just that whatever he fought for is gone. No - it also means that there is no chance he will ever get it back, and it means there isn’t even a chance that at least someone else will have what he fought for in his stead. 

The kind of loss he’s used to has its own sick, mirroring sort of gain. A lover gone to someone more satisfying, a settlement fallen to a rival lord, fellow soldiers ground into the mud of the battlefield - at least he can see the reason, the profit, in those losses, even if that reason hurts him. His former lover will be happier, or at least better paid; his lord will be spited at the tactical loss; his fellows will never suffer another hurt or indignity after the final one. 

But this? 

Losing everything means that there is  _ no _ gain for  _ any  _ reason, for  _ anyone.  _ There is no light, no hope, nothing that he can twist himself around to seeing someone being happier as a result. 

It’s all just - gone.  

____________________________

 

The drink had been good, if also a little frightening in the thought that it would tie him to the Ghostwood, the Feywilds, another creature he barely knew. But he’d accepted a mug because the others hadn’t seemed frightened and the innkeeper Wine hadn’t seemed too bad a sort of tether-master, if he had to be tethered. . . 

Then drink had led to talking. Mourninglight had revealed that he’d saved Brelyeis’s life, one of the very first times they’d thought the former chancellor dead, and Moth had quickly been able to decipher the truth of it, which was that Mourninglight had been a part of Brelyeis himself - or maybe the other way ‘round, Brelyeis a part of Mourninglight? Kaeh’s head still spins to think of it - all of it, any of it. 

And then Mourninglight had shouted that he was his own man - all right, of course, well enough. Kaeh couldn’t argue with that. 

And then Mourninglight had said that he had to keep Brelyeis from them, for his own safety, since they’d made a bargain with another fairy that would hurt Brelyeis. Kaeh could hardly believe this, but Mourninglight knew the Wilds and their rules better than he did, better even than Moth did, so - all right, all right. 

And then Mourninglight had dismissed them. 

_ You’re in over your heads. Go home.  _

Brelyeis?  _ No.  _

Helping Brelyeis?  _ No.  _

Helping Mourninglight himself?  _ No.  _

Fixing what had gone wrong?  _ No. _

_ No. No. No.  _

And then he simply - sent them away. 

_____________________________

 

Now, Kaeh will fight many things - almost anything, in fact. 

But he won’t fight a ‘no.’

Not like this.

He’s been told often enough that he doesn’t know when to lose - when to leave something lie, when to walk away, when to die. 

But sometimes, he does.

It is just that - by the time he does know, the loss is often overwhelming, and there’s nothing left to leave or walk away from. 

No more reason even to die. 

___________________________

 

And now they’re back in a tavern in Santhoven, mockingly similar to the one where all of this had started, with a simple contract to fetch a glass orb. But here and now there is talk of war, and Brelyeis is gone, and Rafail was killed, and Moth looks utterly devastated, and Mort is hiding his own pain only fractionally better. 

They are good enough not to say much, Moth and Mort. And for some reason everyone else steers clear of the three of them at the table where Mourninglight has deposited them, and it takes a terribly long time for Kaeh to realize that it must be the goddamn cultists’ robes. 

And they have lost everything. 

They have no way to return to the Feywilds, or at least, not in time to really do anything, even if Mourninglight would let them stay. They can reach the Underdark again from a well just outside the city, but they have not fulfilled the phony mission they were sent out to complete, and besides, Kaeh had already almost blown their cover there too. 

And - there was never a plan that even remotely covered being sent back here, especially as they are. And anyone they could have reached in Santhoven is gone. They are dressed in enemy clothing. They have no resources, no purpose, no friends.  

And Mort’s lover is lost, tortured by the enemy. And Moth’s - well, one of Moth’s lovers is well beyond his reach, perhaps for good, and Kaeh truly doubts that the other will be Moth’s lover much longer.  

Not only has Kaeh lost everything, but these two have lost everything as well. As has Brelyeis. As had Mourninglight. And, as it now seems, so will Stravenka and Santhoven and Fairthwyll. 

Kaeh could scream as each new piece of this terrible enormity slots into place. 

Everything is lost. Literally everything. 

He wants to stand, and walk out into the street, and scream that he’s a soldier of the state of Fairthwyll, and let what happens, happen. 

Maybe the city guards will kill him. 

He doubts he’d be so lucky, and besides, then they’d probably come in after the other two.

These are the only reasons why he doesn’t.

But another thought comes to him soon enough.

____________________

 

He slips away when Mort turns to look out the window. Moth hasn’t once raised his face from his hands, and that - that may be for the best. Kaeh is not sure he could face his former lover again. 

In the shadow of an alley a few doors down - far away enough they won’t be able to find him quickly, as if they’d even come looking - he tears the grey robes apart. Rolls them in the mud a little. Rips until the silhouette is gone, the sleeves, the cowl. 

Until it apparent he’s naked beneath them. 

He hides his sword, his bow, the small pack that the cult had  deigned to give him, away in the shadows. If his weapons are stolen, he has only one trade he can fall back on until he can make it to Fairthwyll, and though he doesn’t care anymore it’s probably best to stick with the one of the two he knows better, just in case. 

He’ll count on the other right now, though, since it’s a bit quicker for what he needs.  

Luckily, all the talk of war doesn’t make men any less eager. Especially if, as he soon hears, they’re all so sure they will win. Fairthwyll is outnumbered two to one, after all. 

He gets on his knees for a pair of trousers; again, for a shirt. He doesn’t fight the hands in his hair, though they’re too small, calloused, ungentle. Nothing for it - he shuts out the memory of bigger, kinder, and fucking gets to work. He spares one last thought to regret that he’d never actually knelt for him - for either of them - before even that is gone as well, and he is just too empty to care. 

With the two new articles of clothing he can probably pass for decent on the road, so he only takes on one more offerer, and even then not until the man shows him silver. When he stands, afterwards, he’s the taller of the two, and the other man hands over the coin and walks away quickly enough. 

There is so much room, too much room, in his chest, but none of it can be filled even by feeling dirty. He feels no compunction about stripping down, pulling on the bartered shirt and trousers, all where he stands. 

The grey robes of the cult he leaves where they fall. They aren’t even worth trying to trade for a few more coppers - may dogs shit on them and rats tear them to pieces. And the slim, gold-embossed book from their pockets, he nudges out with a toe and grinds into the mud with his heel before turning and walking away. 

Off to Fairthwyll. 

It doesn’t matter that he is not actually a man of Fairthwyll, or that he has fought for a petty lord of southern Santhoven all his life. It doesn’t matter that the smaller state’s defenses cannot hold off both Stravenka and Santhoven for long, if at all. It literally does not matter anymore - nothing but a blade will fill the gaping hole growing in his chest, and much as Kaeh could certainly put one there himself,  _ that  _ wouldn’t do any good to anyone. 

Not that his fighting for Fairthwyll will either, but. . . 

This is the closest he can come to  _ doing _ something, when everything else is lost. 

Kaeh has only his sword and his bow to hang on to now, and he’ll do what he can with those until he loses even them. 


	9. a god to a non-believer (gen)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written June 28, 2018

Kaeh sits still in the back of the cart for as long as he can before hopping out. His entire body still thrums with unspent energy after fighting -  _ winning against _ \- those three highwaymen, and if he has to hold still any longer it feels as though he just might burst. 

“Too much energy,” he tells Moth softly, ducking the other’s inquiring look and pretending that it’s just to check on Mort, who’s sleeping off some of the injuries he’d sustained. “ ‘M try to run it off. Henrey said we have all day before we reach the city, right? I won’t go far. Promise.” 

Clutching at the bow he’d found, he jogs around toward the front of the cart before Moth can do more than nod. Moth is - good,  _ very good _ at spotting his dissembling, and although this isn’t a lie, not really, the whole truth of it is embarrassing and gods but Kaeh knows that no one else really needs to be dealing with his issues right now.  

No one but Kaeh himself, that is. And he has to try and fix at least one of the things he fucked up recently, anyway. 

When he’s drawn level with the two men at the front, he slows to match the cart’s pace so that he’s walking alongside Elias. The half-elf looks uncertain and a little anxious to see him there, and Kaeh is unhappily aware that really he’s done fuck all to deserve anything different.

He keeps his head down and his voice quiet. He doesn’t know what else to do.  

“Just - just wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” he says, softly. “Know you were just trying to be friendly, earlier, talking about the, uhh,  _ hin _ or redcaps. And - and that you stopped because of me.”

“Funny how that’ll happen when a stranger looks about ready to commit murder,” Elias says coolly. “Especially when all I did was encourage your friend to share his stories.” 

It’s - it’s a reasonable accusation, even if Elias isn’t actually making one, and  _ godsdammit _ but maybe someday Kaeh will be able to hear folk talking without hearing the potential for threat behind every word. In the meantime, though, he really  _ has _ to learn to tamp the instinct down. 

“Mmm. I know. And it was good of you. But all I could hear was what came next.” 

Because Moth had chimed in his agreement, so to Kaeh’s ears Elias’s next words had been to Moth. 

_ Most the world doesnt believe in the fey and your kind calls them by other names and rattles off the pies theyll make out of halflings. _

Elias is good enough to think that over, but even now his slightly angry confusion makes it clear that he hadn’t meant what Kaeh had heard  _ at all. _

“What came next was me lamenting that the world beyond Fairthwyll doesn’t believe in the fey any longer, beyond mocking the halflings of Luiren for their continued belief. I don’t know what else to tell you.” 

Again, so reasonable an explanation that it hurts, and Kaeh shrugs, helpless in the face of the enormity that was his earlier blunder. “I - I know. Now. Thinking back. But when you said it all I could think was that you meant Moth. That ‘your kind’ were orcs. And that as a folk they would - fucking eat halflings.” 

A few moments pass as Elias digests this, the silence broken only by the muted sound of the horse’s hooves, the wagon wheels, a soft conversation from the back of the cart. Kaeh can’t meet the half-elf’s eyes - saying it aloud only confirms how obviously over the top his suspicions, his reactions, were. 

“I don’t know what surprises me more,” Elias says finally. “That you could think I would say that, or that you imagine anyone would.” 

The sounds of the horse’s hooves and the wagon wheels continue uninterrupted a little while longer as Kaeh bites back the instinctive anger, the urge to snap at being addressed angrily. But - 

Dammit, but Elias is right. So he does. 

“He means the world to me,” he says, finally, more quietly still. He scans the trees, the road ahead, anything so he doesn’t have to see the half-elf’s face when he says it. “Doesn’t excuse what I thought or what I did, but - ‘s why.” 

“So you’ll blame me for your own jealousy,” Elias muses, and oh  _ now _ Kaeh can hear the challenge loud and clear. “What’s next - you’ll warn me off him?” 

This blindsides Kaeh completely. Why would Elias say - 

_ What _ ?

“Warn you  _ off _ ? Moth?” The very thought is so alien, even disturbing, that the usual struggle to find the right words is worse than normal. “Why would I - no! He’s his own man, he’ll tell you what he’s all right with or not, I can’t speak for him.” 

From the corner of his eye he can see Elias is looking at him oddly. Disbelieving. A little frantic now, Kaeh digs further, looking for other words. 

“I’m not. . .I’m not entitled to him, or his attention, or his anything, just because I -” He stops. “Just because I love him. ‘F he’s happy, if they’re happy” -  _ it’s hard not to say Brel’s name, just as it’s also hard to think of him, so far away gods know where _ \- “I don’t care about anything else.” 

And still that sounds so much like Kaeh thinks he’s giving Elias permission when -  _ fuck _ , the very thought causes something in the region of his chest to curl up into a shivering ball. 

There’s no warning. There’s no permission. That’s not how this works, and it never should be. 


	10. devoted (gen)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written Sept 10, 2018

Riel has taken Moth.

Riel has taken Moth Riel has taken Moth _Riel has taken Moth. . ._

Kaeh abruptly collapses to a seat in the dry grass, still staring at the utterly unremarkable bit of air into which two full-grown men have just _completely disappeared_ . He stares and stares as if something about his gaze can reverse what just happened, bring them back so Kaeh can shake some gods-damned answers out of _somebody_ , what the actual _hell is going on_. . .

But even as concerned, as _frightened_ , as he is, Kaeh can admit a few things.

First, Moth hadn’t seemed startled when Riel just appeared out of nowhere and announced that his new warlock needed some time, space, and personal attention to realize his full potential.

Second, in fact, Moth had seemed delighted by Riel’s reappearance, and by the god’s description of a quiet place of learning.

(. . . anything that delights Moth, or makes Moth laugh, or draws Moth’s smile, Kaeh will count a win these days. There’s still a pang in his chest every time he thinks about that pained admission that Moth had touched that cursed mirror hoping it would kill him. Moth’s life is his to do with what he pleases but _gods damn_ that doesn’t mean that Kaeh ever, ever wants to see him choose that road.)

And finally, Riel had promised that they would be back soon. How soon? Oh, maybe an hour, maybe two; all right, fine, it was impossible to say, but if Moth progressed as anticipated then no more than a day, all right? And why was Kaeh, silly child, really asking anyway?

So that’s three things Kaeh can hold on to right now, in a world that just seems to tilt more and more sideways every fuckin’ day.

One: Moth’s fine, and seemed happy, even. Two: Riel has never hurt them. Three: they’ll both come back.

Mort is looking at him strangely.

Hmm.

“How much of that did I say out loud?” he asks.

“Y’ don’t need t’ say a damn thing t’ be weird, y’ just _are_ ,” Mort says evenly.

“That didn’t worry you at all?” Kaeh doesn’t even need to clarify _what._ He just gestures towards thin air.

“Should it have?” Mort asks, even as ever. “Out’ve _everything_ that’s gone mad these last couple’a days, y’ve got yer balls in a twist about _that_?”

Kaeh tilts his head, grudgingly conceding: ok, Mort’s got him there.

Mort snorts, hefting his axe. “Glad we got _summat_ sorted. Ready to go, then?”

Go?

“The fuck? I’m not going anywhere without them.” He settles his ass into the grass more firmly still, in case Mort’s thinking of trying to lift him bodily.

But Mort only looks at him strangely. “If’n he’s a god, Kaeh, stands t’ reason he could find us again wherever we go, easy enough.”

Even if Mort doesn’t mean it – and he probably doesn’t, there isn’t a mean or cruel sinew in his whole body – Kaeh can still hear the other side of this: _if Riel is a god, he and Moth don’t need to come back at all._

“No. We’re staying right here,” Kaeh growls. And Mort, bless him for a long-suffering friend, extends a hand-axe like a raised middle finger and rolls his eyes, but he stays too. He mutters and grumbles a bit, but he’s napping soon enough, coat and scarf pulled over his head to shield him from the sun.

And Kaeh is left alone with his thoughts. Not really a place he likes to be much anymore, especially hearing all of Riel’s hints that –

He can barely force the thought out, even in the safety of his own skull.

Especially hearing all of Riel’s hints that Brel is dead, in the time they left behind.

There’s a terrible dull roar that builds behind Kaeh’s eyes whenever he tries to approach this thought, and he shies and backs away, unable to accept a single thing about it. He’d told Brel this much once, and Brel had laughed it off, thinking that Kaeh was mocking him and Moth, but Kaeh had been dead serious.

_The world is a better place with you in it._

With Brel gone there, the time they left behind has become unimaginable. With Moth threatened here and Brel possibly in danger again (Kaeh isn’t sure he believes all of Adaire’s assurances), this time could easily become unimaginable too.  

And there, there was little to nothing that Kaeh could do. And here, it already seems like there may be little to nothing he can do, all over again. Nothing was ever enough.

And as he stares into the empty air where Moth and Riel had disappeared, Mort snoring loudly beside him, Kaeh has the first inklings of a desperate idea.

Who is more powerful than the cultists, the fey, and the political opponents who have threatened Brel for as long as Kaeh has known him?

Who has caught Moth’s attention when he was falling low, and gave him a reason to smile, even laugh, again?

Riel.

A god.

A _god_.

_Fuck._

“Fuck.”

In his sleep Mort groans something about bloody wood elves who never fucking shut up, and by the race Kaeh knows that his friend doesn’t mean Adaire. So Kaeh rolls to his feet and paces a little further away, but never really leaving the spot beside the road where Moth and Riel had disappeared.

He says it again to see if it might make him feel better this time.

“Fuck!”

It doesn’t. The idea still sounds scarily plausible.

_Kaeh could ask Riel for help._

Every fuckin’ instinct he has is screaming. Kaeh doesn’t ask for help. He doesn’t trust the idea of gods, and every fiber of his being rebels against the idea of swearing service again.

Times like this, thoughts like this, Kaeh either has to walk it off or fuck it out. Right now, he walks.

He walks, and he quickly realizes that this thought of asking Riel for help is not as completely, utterly aberrant as the thought of a world where Brel is dead and Moth came so, so close to following him and there was nothing Kaeh could do for either of them.   

Oh.

It’s really that simple.

_Oh._

Kaeh is going to ask Riel for help.

_Fuck._

He walks some more, but always circling back to the impromptu little campsite where Mort is snoring away and the empty air mocks him with no sign of Moth or Riel. How long has it been since they disappeared?

It doesn’t matter. He’s going to give himself until they get back to come up with something he can tell Riel.

Fuck. Kaeh doesn’t know the first thing about dealing with gods. What is he supposed to do: ask Riel? Petition Riel? Offer Riel?

Wait. Folks always go on about praying to gods. So, praying: that’s probably a good place to start, yes?

But Riel has actually seen Kaeh before: a couple of times, in fact. Does Kaeh need to introduce himself? Does Riel actually have to be around and able to see him for a prayer to get through, or what? _Double_ fuck – does Kaeh have to kneel, or fold his hands? Are there words that folks are meant to use when they pray?

Kaeh’s head is whirling – this is too fuckin’ much to deal with. And that’s still leaving aside the whole other can of fishing worms: the fact that he doesn’t know what Riel will want in return. Kaeh isn’t Moth, or Brel – Moth can read, and reason with people, and speak well, and cast magic. Brel can also read, and command people, and speak well, and cast magic. They’re both intelligent, literate, genuinely good folk.

Kaeh just – fights. That’s it. That’s all.  He fights everything and everyone including himself, and he’s not learned or gentle or anything like they are.

Well. He’s not going to find out if he doesn’t ask, and he’s not going to be able to ask if he can’t even work himself up to the idea of praying.

But the comparison from before seems to hang in the front of his mind now: a world without Brel and maybe even Moth, or a world in which Kaeh sucks it up and asks – _prays_ – for help.

The choice is clear.

He sneaks a look over at Mort, checking that he can still hear the halfling’s snores. He can.

He sneaks a look over to the road, turning right and then left to see if anyone’s coming. No one is.

He sneaks a look over toward the woods a bit of a ways back, seeing if there’s anything or anyone that needs his attention right now. There’s nothing he can see.

All right. Praying. Can’t be that hard, can it? And hopefully Riel won’t dock marks if Kaeh makes a mistake somewhere, like with the not kneeling, or the not folding hands, or the fumbling words. And if he tells Kaeh there _was_ a mistake, well: then Kaeh’ll change whatever it is and do the prayer again proper the way Riel wants it. There. Sorted. Hopefully.

So Kaeh clears his throat. Coughs. Starts. Speaks.

Prays.

“Erm. This is a, ummm, prayer to Riel. God of death, and undeath, and some kind of bread. So no one else better be listening, ok? Fuck off if you are, this isn’t for you.

Riel. Ummm. Sorry, I don’t know what kinds of titles you want, but I’ll ask next time I see you, eh? Ok. I’m praying because I – aah – I’m asking for help.”

He coughs again. Swallows. And _prays_.

“I’m afraid. For our whole group. Moth – you know him already – has been so low lately; Brelyeis, I – I heard you say he was dead, in our time. Mort is feeling guilty for something he didn’t know he was actually doing; Adaire is probably dead in our time as well.

But these are the best, the most important people I know, Riel, and I – I need to do more for them than I can right now. And I’m asking for help because I love them, more than I hate or I fear anything else. Even doing this.

Please. If you are a god – no, fine, you’re a god – please help us. I’m open to how, or what have you, but we need help if they’re going to make it to the end of this.”

That’s the hardest part over, right? Kaeh scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand, furious at himself for the tears in his eyes, but plows forward.

“I don’t know what you would want from me, but here’s what I can do. I can believe – either in you, or if there’s some creed you want your folk to learn and hold to. I can learn new things – it takes me a bit, but I can do it if I want to, and in this situation I’ll want to. And, ummm –“

No, how could he have forgotten this part.

“I can offer my service. If there’s someplace a god needs my x, just tell me next time you see me, and I’ll – I’ll sign.

So. Your help, my whatever you want. Only two things I’ll add: please don’t hold anyone else accountable for when I mess shit up, because I will but it’ll be on me. And please don’t ever make me hurt any of these four, or anyone who isn’t involved in tramping folk underfoot somehow, because I can’t do that.

Ummm. That’s the important things, I think. Thank you for listening, if you did. And uhh, yeah, that’s the end of this prayer.”

He waits, stock-still, but nothing happens. There’s no great sign to show that his prayer was heard or even if it was adequate, and Kaeh wonders if he didn’t do it right, or whether maybe this is Riel’s kind way of saying _thanks but no fuckin’ thanks._

But no sooner has Kaeh had time to think of this than there’s a slight rush of air in the campsite at his back, and he can hear the sudden sound of footfalls: Moth and Riel have returned, just as promised. Riel is speaking and Moth is laughing, though Kaeh can’t quite make out the words.

But their reappearance makes everything he just said and did feel real in ways that it hadn’t before. His hands tremble just a little, but oddly Kaeh feels no compulsion to reach for either his bow or his sword on this one.

Instead he turns, and makes his way back toward the others, ready to confront Mort’s recounting about his bullheadedness or listen to anything Moth wants to share about his time studying to be a warlock.

And as ready as he’ll ever be to face anything that Riel might have to say, or not to say, about Kaeh’s own pitiful prayer.  


	11. stille nacht (gen)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written December 11, 2018

It is snowing. Soft white flakes batter gently against the window and then hurtle away, flung here and there by a playful winter wind much like a cat would fling a favorite toy. This morning, frost had etched its strange mesmeric patterns all across the glass; now, the wind and the storm have scoured them all away, piling drifts of fluffy snow across the pane outside instead. If the storm keeps up at this rate, and no one opens that window, then eventually the snow will drift and pile up to cover it entirely, and the room within will be just a little darker, a little cozier, for having gained this one additional barrier against the cold outside.

Kaeh can’t really remember the last time he watched snow from behind a window made of actual glass. And certainly there has never been a time or a place when he ever watched snow from a bed like the one that he is stretched out across now, with sheets and blankets and a down comforter so soft and fine that even now, months later, his calloused fingers still tend to snag against the weave.

“It’s just snow, it’s not going to stop or do some sort of sordid court dance no matter how long you stare at it,” Brelyeis says absently, from where he is working at his desk across the room.

Kaeh starts a little, looking away from the swirling snow in a heartbeat. He still gets a jolt from hearing that voice – not so long ago, he thought that he would never get to hear it again. “How did you know I was staring?”

“A lucky guess that you just confirmed for me,” Brelyeis tells him, never looking up from his work. This afternoon he’s concentrating on a tome that’s nearly a hand-span thick, and until he paused it just now Kaeh has been watching the snow at the window to the low, soothing counterpoint of the spell that reads these books to Brelyeis. “My second guess would have been that you were staring at me.”

Kaeh can’t quite stop a fond snort as he shifts, pulling himself up from where he had been sprawled on his belly, looking out with his chin on his crossed arms. “That would’ve been a good guess too.”

“It’s always a good guess,” Brelyeis says, his finger already rising from where he had set it down on the page to halt the spell.

Kaeh just grins at him, soft and fond even when Brelyeis can’t see it. “It  _ is _ a good guess. I mean, I’m doing it again right now.”

“Idiot.” Obstructing finger removed, the mellow voice of the spell’s reader begins to speak again, translating Brelyeis’s book for him in a way that Kaeh – well, in a way that Kaeh secretly dreams of doing for him some day.

“Yes.”

And now it is Brelyeis who snorts.

This favorite, familiar exchange completed, Kaeh nestles down amidst the blankets again, but this time, the snow outside no longer holds his attention. Instead, as the wind continues to hurl soft flakes against the pane, Kaeh shuffles around so that his back is to the window and he is facing Brelyeis. He lies on his side and closes his eyes; quite without conscious intent, his body curls a bit around thin air and into itself, as if imagining that he were holding something – someone – that close instead.

Between the soft sounds of the snow at the window, and the modulated voice that reads Brelyeis his boring tax codes or whatever it is today, Kaeh is dozing soon enough.

He usually does, on the afternoons or evenings while Brelyeis works in his chambers like this. Kaeh can’t quite understand Brelyeis’s passion and dedication to an entire city, when Kaeh himself can only feel that strongly about a few people at most, but – oh, the old man knows, that degree of sheer care is one of the many, many reasons why Kaeh feels so strongly for this man. And Kaeh would never stand in Brelyeis’s way when he needs to sate that dedication by working. Kaeh can wait until Brelyeis is satisfied with whatever he feels he must accomplish today.

Kaeh will always wait.

The first few times things had worked out like this, Kaeh had waited by poking around the room a little, nosy and honestly curious about what else he might be able to glean about Brelyeis’s life or his interests in what he could find, but – well. Kaeh quickly realized that his movements or the small noises he couldn’t help making might be distracting Brelyeis from his work instead, so waiting had turned into keeping watch instead. Keeping watch for Brelyeis while he works makes more sense anyway – this is something Kaeh can understand, this is something Kaeh can do, and this is something that might actually be of use to Brelyeis, unlike the snooping that he had simply put up with in wry amusement.

And so. Now Kaeh keeps watch. And if he does so from atop Brelyeis’s bed, as he does today, then his eyes may close and his body fall lax, but there is always at least one knife close to hand and Kaeh is always listening.

Someday, he thinks, maybe he’ll find a better way. Somewhere else closer to Brelyeis at his desk, but not in his way, and not in a fashion that will make him think Kaeh is demanding his attention.

Maybe – sitting next to him. On the floor, and leaning against his chair. Or – or else,  _ fuck _ , in front of him, so that Kaeh can lean forward, lay his head right there in Brelyeis’s lap.

But then – hmmmm. That wouldn’t work if Kaeh was sitting, would it. He’d have to be kneeling. Hmmm.

Something about this image is strangely appealing, though. That way Kaeh would be even closer to Brelyeis, and when he jolts awake, as still invariably happens, then. . . Maybe feeling Brelyeis, warm and alive beneath his cheek, would mean fewer of those agonizing first seconds when Kaeh is so sure that this is all a dream. So sure that he’ll wake up to find himself freezing in a field somewhere in Fairthwyll, knowing  _ Brelyeis died alone and in pain and there was nothing I could do for him _ .

So. Something to try someday, then, if Brelyeis just scoffs at him for being an idiot and doesn’t seem actually displeased. But for now Kaeh simply shifts amidst the blankets, his eyes opening immediately when the reading spell stops.

His head lifts a little and he watches, much like earlier accused, as Brelyeis stands and steps away from his desk, moving to stand before the stack of books that he’d had brought up here to his chambers earlier today.

Well. The stack of books that he had piled into Kaeh’s arms earlier today while Kaeh had taunted him for not being able to pile on enough weight to overwhelm a fighter. It had been a stupid taunt: Brelyeis’s bookshelves seem endless, and of course he had more than enough books to keep stacking them in Kaeh’s arms forever. Eventually, laughing, Kaeh had had to admit defeat, and Brelyeis had crowed for a bit before having him carry up only a dozen or so.

Kaeh’s arms still ache. It’s a good feeling, though. He was actually able to  _ do  _ something.

“You’re staring again.”

He doesn’t bother trying to deny it. “Mmmm, but is it at the snow or at you this time?”

“Me,” Brelyeis guesses absently.

Sometimes he says things, or does things, that just – knock the wind from Kaeh’s lungs, for no discernable reason at all, and all Kaeh can do is try to hang on until he can breathe again. Until the world rights itself beneath his shaking hands again. So.

“ _ You _ ,” he agrees hoarsely, and at the tone Brel turns toward him a little, brow furrowing and glass eyes looking right through Kaeh even if this half-light means that Brelyeis cannot quite  _ see  _ him.

“I wasn’t aware that you had taken ill in the last half hour or so,” Brelyeis says, frowning.

“’M fine,” Kaeh manages.  _ You’re here, after all. _

“You sound like you’ve taken a sheaf of sandpaper to your throat.”

“Where – where would I have gotten one of those?”

“Ridiculous.” Brelyeis turns back to the stack, running one precise finger along each spine and listening carefully to what the reading spell calls each book. Eventually he must find the one he needed, for he pulls a heavy, leather-bound tome from the stack and makes his way back to his desk.

It’s just – he’s just. . .

There are no words to describe this. This, this –  _ this _ . It is snowing but Kaeh is warm, it is growing dark but soon the room will be lit, and Kaeh is alone in another man’s bed but that is by choice and out of respect, and even then –

Even then, Kaeh can trust that he won’t be alone here forever.

“I adore you,” he says softly.

Those three words are really standing in for three other words, and as soon as Kaeh thinks that he won’t scare Brelyeis off by saying them, then he plans on switching out the three he says now for the three that he really wants to be saying instead. But in the same way that Kaeh now keeps watch while Brelyeis works, he can wait. They have another chance now, and Kaeh intends to make sure that this time around, things are as good as they can possibly be.

“Good,” Brelyeis says, soft and distracted as he starts up his reading spell again.

And Kaeh smiles, settling back in to keep watch as the snow piles up ever higher against the window pane.


	12. untitled (M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written January 7, 2019

There’s something about a good fucking cry, a couple of punches on a brick wall, that’ll shake some shit loose. 

‘Talk to people.’ 

Where I’m from, the kind of work I did, talking only gets you hurt. Anything you admit about yourself is something that’s going to be used against you.

Something you want? Taken. Something you believe? Spat on. Someone you love? Hostage. 

So you don’t talk. Not about what you want, not about what you feel, not about what hurts you, not about what scares you. You keep your head down and you keep what’s important to yourself, and maybe,  _ maybe _ , whatever it is that you would have talked about won’t get taken away from you. Won’t be held up for the world to see and judge:  _ look what this poor sod thought he deserved to feel!  _

But even where I was from, even the work I did, you still felt things. Nothing could burn that out of you. So instead, you learned to  _ do _ . If no one asks, you don’t have to tell, but you can still show what you want or believe or love by  _ doing.  _

Problem is, if you do shit but you don’t or won’t or can’t say why. . . Well, then the feeling can’t get taken from you. But it can’t always be understood, either. 

It’s a long story, how it happened, but before you and I met in that knifing, ummm. . . I was with your librarian, Moth, for a bit. And I fucked things up with him, just like that. 

We were facing an enemy court, a whole buncha bastard priests and their leader, a Speaker.  And surprise! - I fucked up. Wouldn’t bow. Wouldn’t lie. Wouldn’t listen. Almost got myself killed. 

And after that Moth started distancing himself from me. 

I don’t blame him, I never have - fuck knows it was only fair. But I got desperate, and I tried to win him back the only way I could think how - doing things for him. Bigger and bigger things to get his attention, to make him look at me, to make him smile. 

Gave up my bow, my best weapon, to get him out of cultist robes and into normal clothes when we rode into Fairthwyll. Offered to pay a healer’s price when that healer gave Moth a new leg, even when I hated the healer and didn’t know what price he would have asked. Sacrificed my last healing potion to a wishing well to ask for that healer to join us, thinking that Moth would have been happy to know he was alive. 

Never actually  _ told  _ Moth what I was doing in all this, though. All he saw was me being reckless, just like I’d been before the Speaker, and he just turned further and further away from me until after one fight he finally looked at me in fear and disgust, and he just - just turned away entirely and started to cry in the healer’s arms.

It broke my heart, but I never said anything. It was  _ fair  _ and it was his right and maybe everything I’d done just hadn’t been enough. 

You can’t admit you’re hurt, or then you will be. 

And now - now it’s happening all over again. 

Again, long story, but - Brelyeis, I learned that you  _ died _ . Worse, that you were tortured to death. I learned that you died alone, and in pain, and doubting whether I even cared. And - and that apparently you forgave me with your last words. 

“It’s all right.” 

Brelyeis, I will carry the weight of those words until I die. So til tomorrow night then, maybe. 

Because it  _ isn’t _ all right. It was never all right, and it will never be all right. We’re all going to die, someday, and most of us, we’ll die in pain. I don’t think I could have stopped either of those things from happening to you. But I keep thinking that - if I’d been there, you wouldn't have died alone. You wouldn’t have died doubting me. 

Because Brelyeis, I - 

Brelyeis, I love you. I love you, and I would do anything for you. 

Offer my life to a god. Walk this continent fighting cultists. Look at every ring in every jeweler’s. Fight. Kneel. Die. 

_ fuck shit fuck _

Maybe - maybe that’s the problem. That I would do anything for you except tell you that when I do something for you, it is for you. And that I’m doing things because I’m scared to actually say anything instead. 

Fuck. Fuck me. 

That’s - that’s really all I wanted to do, earlier today. Wanted to let you know what I was doing and where I would be, so that you’d know I wasn’t using you. And now - instead it seems like I’ve made you doubt me all over again. 

I don’t know what to do. ‘Talk to people.’ People hurt each other, Brelyeis, sometimes it seems like that’s all people do. I don’t like to talk much because I don’t want to hurt anyone I care about in the ways that I’ve been hurt. Don’t want to hurt my friends, don’t want to hurt my allies, don’t ever ever want to hurt you. 

But here we are, and you’re hurt despite everything I tried to do. And I don’t know where to go from here. It’s - it’s tempting not to go anywhere at all. Just do this ball, get this damn book, and then - go. Just - walk out of the capitol and into the night and keep walking until I get home. 

Except that home doesn’t exist anymore. Not in my own time, and not in this one either. 

Almost seven years ago now, home was an abandoned cottage where I lived with a man I loved. His name was River - a medic, a cleric, with the sharpest tongue I’d ever heard and a calling to heal the direst cases. We served in two actions together, and then his calling took him away, sent him out to some godforsaken village to heal a plague. I walked out of a contract to follow him, and we were on the run for most of our time together - two good years. Then we found that damned cottage, and we bickered and fucked and laughed until he contracted the same plague that he’d left to heal and his god let him die in my arms.

And all I could do for him was hold the knife. Talk to him, distract him as I drove the blade home. 

When I first met you, Brelyeis - four years into the future, now - River had been dead for more than six years. In our time, he’s been dead for just about two, which means that somewhere in the south I’ve just snapped and set that cottage on fire. I’ll spend a couple years completely silent and living off the woods until I come to Santhoven looking for a fight I can’t win and a ditch I can die in instead. I didn’t deserve to rest near him. 

And instead, back then at least, you took me by the shoulders and made me sit, and I hated everything and everyone so much that I actually did. I wasn’t in any place to talk, or to listen, and yet I did. 

. . . Fuck, it hurts to even fucking say any of this. 

One more story, then, and I’ll go back inside and stop talking to this wall like it gives a single bleeding fuck about anything I’m saying. 

You and I met in Santhoven. We didn’t get along well because you have that beautiful accent and I am a stubborn fuck. We met again because I walked in on an assassination attempt and kidnapped you so we could get you medical treatment. 

You won my reluctant admiration that night when I learned how you fought, right here in Santhoven. You won my grudging respect when we traveled together in the Underdark and I learned something of your history. You won something a little softer, a little more wondering, when you fell asleep on my chest after a friend died. And Brelyeis, you won everything that I am in Caer Bogh, when you saw me for the first time and told me I looked ‘tall’ - and then promptly released me and my best friend from our contract with you, though we hadn’t found the items you’d asked. 

Everything that came after that was the bow on the gift for me, because no one - lord, god, or man - had ever done something like that for me. Had ever gone against what was  _ fair  _ and what was owed, and just  _ freed _ me. And Brelyeis, I - I have been your man, in any way you might have wanted me, from that day on. But I - I’m just realizing that even then, I never told you this. 

Fuck shit  _ ouch _ . Well, in today’s news, brick is hard and no good for punching. Local idiot busts knuckles. Should have busted his own mouth instead. 

Sleep well, Brelyeis, wherever you are. Just gonna bust a few more knuckles here before tomorrow night, when I - I guess I have to talk again. 


	13. under cover of darkness (E)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written January 16-17, 2018

Second drawer to the left, bureau right beside the bed. He keeps all manner of things in there that he wouldn’t want exposed to prying eyes.

Kaehlan, though, doesn’t seem the type to pry. In fact, on the nights when he appears to, aaah, ‘visit,’ the wood elf hardly touches anything besides the bed, and of course whatever soon-deceased items of clothing that Brelyeis happens to be wearing when Kaehlan gets his enthusiastically wandering hands on him.

It had been rather amusing for Brelyeis the first few times, observing Kaehlan tiptoe around his bed chambers as if afraid that even breathing too hard would shatter something. But at this rate, his strange delicacy with non bed- or clothing-related items means that Kaehlan might take  _ years  _ to find any of the things that Brelyeis wouldn’t mind him finding, so. Perhaps this means that it’s time to give the idiot a little hint.

So Brelyeis fishes a plain black velvet bag out of that second drawer, finding juuuuuust the right spot to place it atop his coverlet, where even Kaehlan can’t possibly miss it whenever he next appears. Then, the next night that Brelyeis hears the wood elf’s quiet knock, he plants the bag as planned and then makes some excuse to absent himself for a moment after letting the other in. He lingers just beyond the doorway, listening intently, but there’s no rustle of velvet, no whisper of drawstrings: the bag is  _ right there _ but Kaehlan  _ still  _ hasn’t taken the bait.

Brelyeis doesn’t bother keeping his sigh to himself as he sweeps back into the room. “You disappoint me sometimes, you know.”

It isn’t full dark yet, so his image of his visitor remains only half-formed. But he can still hear the nervous shifting and rustle of sheets as Kaehlan fidgets, the gulp and swallow as Kaehlan frantically shifts through what little he’s done since he arrived here.

“Uhhhhh. . .” Eloquent. Extraordinary. The absolute fool. “I’m sorry for disappointing you, then.”

“Sometime you really must explain to me why you think that apologizing is actually an adequate solution for anything,” Brelyeis tells him absently, walking right to the edge of the bed and pushing the other’s legs apart so that he can stand between them. “Especially when you don’t even bother to ask what I’m disappointed by.”

Kaehlan immediately moves his legs as directed, calloused hands rising to settle gently atop Brelyeis’s hips, and Brelyeis reminds himself sternly that he isn’t amused by this easy compliance, isn’t charmed by it.

“Whatever it is, just tell me and I’ll try and fix it?” the wood elf promises quietly, leaning forward as if trying to get to Brelyeis’s neck, and yes, that right there is the evening’s cue for Brelyeis to push him back a little for a moment. Kaehlan can be strangely fervent for a paramour who simply shows up at random a few nights a week – quietly ardent and borderline worshipful, oddly willing to do first and ask questions never, and it’s still as peculiar now as it was the first time that he made a statement like this. 

Easier not to deal with it right now, to be honest.

"Stop making promises you aren’t capable of keeping,” Brelyeis warns him, tapping lightly against his chest, and there’s a sharp, almost wounded intake of breath from where Kaehlan has sat back, hands still on Brelyeis’s hips.

“Of course,” the wood elf whispers, far more solemn than the situation really warrants, and Brelyeis sighs with impatience, shaking his head even as he leans provocatively up against the other elf, reaching around him for that damn velvet bag he still hasn’t touched. And Kaehlan  _ shivers _ as their bodies are briefly pressed together, ridiculously easy to agitate or excite even though by his own admittance he’s had several partners before Brelyeis. It’s-

“Absurd.” By now this has become a standard description. And, right on cue:

“ _ Yes _ ,” Kaehlan admits, serene. He never defends himself, only ever agrees with whatever assessment Brelyeis deems fit to assign him. 

“Business as usual, then.” Bag acquired, Brelyeis shakes it in the general area of Kaehlan’s face. “Did it not occur to you that maybe a strange package left out where you would see it would mean that I wanted you to open it?”

“No?” Kaehlan just sounds confused. “This is your room, Brelyeis, I wouldn’t just go around opening things?”

Ridiculous. Brelyeis sighs. “Ridiculous. What do I even see in you?”

It really is just intended as a way to return to their easy banter, but – well, half the time Kaehlan misses cues like this.

“I don’t know,” the other elf admits quietly, actually answering the question instead of deflecting it.

“Oh, for-“ Sometimes Brelyeis just has to spell things out. “Kaehlan. Not everything has to be fifty shades of melodrama, and sometimes a rhetorical question really is just a rhetorical question. Just open the damn bag already.”

It may not be full dark yet and he may not quite be fully sighted for the night, but Brelyeis can still follow the susurrus of cloth and that tiny gasp of breath. He still knows exactly when Kaehlan has finally, as instructed, opened the damn bag.

“ _ Oh _ .”

“Oh, indeed.” In his defense, Brelyeis think that it’s fair he’s a little apprehensive about how things might go from here. Maybe a man who was lucky enough to get a flesh cock at birth might feel affronted by having a glass one placed in his hands. Maybe Kaehlan will think that Brelyeis is judging him, or slighted that he isn’t shy about his toys. Maybe he’ll throw a fit, or-

Or maybe he’ll shift restlessly on the edge of the bed, his breath already coming little faster as he whispers, “Brelyeis, this is a really _fucking gorgeous_ _cock_ and I really, really hope you’re going to put it in me tonight?”

_ Hnnnngh.  _ What?  

“What?”

Kaehlan actually sounds thrilled to pieces. “Please?”

“That is-“ Really not what he expected. “Acceptable.”

“Old man  _ bless _ ,” Kaehlan enthuses, and Brelyeis really does need to break him out of using these strange half-religious sayings, but maybe he’ll worry about that later, when he doesn’t have a very excited wood elf standing up from his bed to cup his face in broad hands and kiss him breathless, an extended examination of his lips and tongue interspersed with darting pecks of affection against his cheeks.

“Can’t wait,” Kaehlan whispers finally, pulling back just far enough that he can gently touch first his lips and then his own forehead to Brelyeis’s. In the growing darkness, Brelyeis can almost,  _ almost  _ make out a grin that he’s only ever traced with his fingers or caught hints of in the dead of night.

“You’re going to  _ have _ to wait,” he contradicts, even as Kaehlan lets go of his face and steps back: by the movement of his shadow, and the muted thumps and rustle of rough cloth, the wood elf is already kicking off his boots, pulling his shirt over his head. “You’ve seen how big that damn thing is, you’re going to need prep.”

“Nah!” Kaehlan says cheerfully, and there’s the whisper of strings that means his trousers are coming off next, the slight squeak of feathers that mean he’s sitting down again. “Well, I mean, a little, sure, but I want to  _ feel  _ that monster, Brelyeis – every ridge and every inch of it.  _ Mmmmmmm _ .” 

. . . Well isn’t  _ that _ a mental image, and Brelyeis can  _ hear  _ Kaehlan’s voice already growing deeper, aroused by the very thought of a pretty glass toy that Brelyeis hadn’t even been sure he would stand for. Brelyeis can feel the first pulses of his own arousal, the beginnings of wetness between his own legs, and there’s definitely need in his paramour’s voice now as Kaehlan pleads, “Come here?”

Oh, yes, the wood elf  _ definitely _ shucked his clothes just like that: Brelyeis’s boots trample down either Kaehlan’s shirt or his trousers or maybe both on his way to grant that plea. Then Kaehlan’s hands are on his hips again and this time it’s the wood elf tilting his head up for a kiss – or two, or three – his seat on the bed depriving him of his usual height in fun and interesting ways that set Brelyeis throbbing just a little bit more.

They’re both panting by the time this kiss ends. An exploratory hand downward, and a corresponding moan, provide irrefutable proof that Kaehlan really is excited by this.

Brelyeis is just beginning to undo the laces of his own shirt when one of Kaehlan’s hands leaves his hip and warm fingers close over his. “Leave it?” Kaehlan entreats quietly.

“You really want me to fuck you fully clothed?” Brelyeis asks, and the words were meant to come out disbelieving but both of them seem to realize at the same time that – well, actually, that might be really damn hot. Brelyeis huffs in what should be exasperation but comes out sounding more like a gasp, and Kaehlan groans like he’s dying. Both his hands – the one at Brelyeis’s hip and the one folded over Brelyeis’s own hands – are trembling ever so slightly with excitement.

“Yes. Yes.  _ Yes _ .”

“The boots are going, though,” Brelyeis informs him, for lack of a better response.

“Why?” Kaehlan actually sounds almost forlorn, even though Brelyeis has hardly pulled away far at all.

“Dirty, Kaehlan.” He toes off the offending footwear in question before stepping back into the welcoming vee of Kaehlan’s legs where they’re spread over the edge of the bed to accommodate him.

“That’s fine!” Kaehlan protests, already laughing as he tugs Brelyeis closer, and Brelyeis will never know what prompted him to say it but there it is: “Never would have taken you for the kind of man who liked a boot on his spine, Kaehlan.”

The wood elf goes very still beneath his hands, and he’s uncharacteristically quiet for the space of one breath, then two, then three. Brelyeis is just beginning to worry that he might have said something irreparably wrong when finally:

“No,” Kaehlan says slowly, with a strange hesitation that disappears a little further with every word. “ ‘m really, really not. But – if it was you, I think I wouldn’t mind. I’d at least try.”  

“Duly noted,” Brelyeis tells him, as briskly as if there hadn’t been that strange pause that he’s definitely going to have to poke at a little more sometime. “But in the meantime – no boots, thank you, but shirt and trousers are negotiable and have been successfully negotiated.”

“Good,” Kaehlan says appreciatively, swinging one leg over atop the bed and waiting for Brelyeis to climb up beside him before he swings the other up as well. Settling down on his back, he plants both feet sole-down atop the coverlet and bends his knees apart so that Brelyeis can settle between his legs again, and fuck it all but it’s still not dark enough for Brelyeis to see his face, to appreciate whatever expression he’s being regarded with now as Kaehlan whispers, “Fuck but you’re fucking  _ gorgeous _ , Brelyeis.”

“You’ve already gotten me in bed, idiot, there’s no need to continue flattering me.”

“Want to,” Kaehlan insists, closing his knees gently against Brelyeis’s ribs and waiting a moment to check if he’ll protest before rolling the two of them to their sides, Brelyeis still fully clothed and now well cocooned by lean legs. “Always need to, always want to.”

“Idiot.” He doesn’t refuse the kiss, though.

“Mmmm.” Kaehlan hums his agreement, and then there are two calloused fingers tapping gently against Brelyeis’s lower lip. “Help an idiot out here?”

Kaehlan may think he’s teasing Brelyeis by doing this, but if that’s the case then he’s so, so wrong, and he’s about to be badly outflanked. Brelyeis accepts the fingers offered but then, the second they’re in his mouth, licks lasciviously, tonguing the tips as if they were a cock and sucking, with a gentle scrape of teeth, just like he’s observed that Kaehlan likes best. And for the second time that night, Kaehlan moans as if he’s dying.

His fingers tremble against Brelyeis’s tongue, and he pulls them out gently so that he can lean in himself instead. Then he breaks the kiss suddenly to gasp for air, panting soft and warm right against Brelyeis’s lips, and with a tiny thrill, Brelyeis realizes that Kaehlan has probably just reached behind himself with those same wet fingers.

Is probably touching himself. Breaching himself. Preparing himself.

For Brelyeis.

But the thrill of this realization is quickly undercut by a surprisingly vicious stab of anger. If only Brelyeis could fucking  _ see _ , then he wouldn’t be depending on these kinds of  _ probablys  _ right now. If he could just  _ see  _ again, then he could lean up and look over and he would  _ know _ what Kaehlan is doing. The tiny slick sounds, the aborted gasps of pleasure, the little puffs of air – these little cues for his other senses are all well and good, but Brelyeis wants to know how fast Kaehlan will take his own fingers, how many knuckles deep he’ll bother getting before demanding the toy, whether his eyes have rolled up in his head. Fuck it – for that matter, Brelyeis wouldn’t mind knowing what color those eyes even  _ are _ . Kaehlan has said that they’re grey but sometimes Kaehlan knows fuck all about anything, and anyway what kind of grey is grey, are Kaehlan’s eyes storm grey or are they stone grey, why do all of these useless questions even matter anymore when he lost his sight and resigned himself to that loss long ago-

“Hey,” Kaehlan says quietly, with a quick pecking kiss to the tip of his nose. “Brelyeis. Brelyeis?”

Damn it all. He hadn’t even noticed that the sounds, the sensations, had stopped, but they have. And now Kaehlan is going to fret and ruin the mood in his usual ham-handed way as he tries to figure out what’s gone wrong and how he can fix it. Well, surprise, Brelyeis thinks viciously: not everything has a solution, Kaehlan, not everything can be fixed, and-

“Cast darkness?” Kaehlan asks, his sentences incomplete and truncated in the way they tend to get when Kaehlan himself is getting off, but still surprisingly coherent.

Wait. What?

How does he know this? Brelyeis has never cast this spell around him before: to the best of his knowledge, has never even indicated that he can. For that matter, how does Kaehlan even know that darkness  _ is _ a spell?

Lucky guess. That must be it, that  _ has _ to be it – there’s no way that Kaehlan could actually have this knowledge given his own magic-less background, and they haven’t known each other long enough for Brelyeis to have demonstrated the ability to him. So definitely a lucky guess, then, and it’s actually a surprisingly good solution for the frustrations that Brelyeis hasn’t even articulated to him.

Except for the fact that:

“You won’t be able to see.” Darkvision won’t help Kaehlan here if Brelyeis casts darkness, and though he’s taken pains to try and conceal it, Brelyeis has noticed that the wood elf starts to panic when he can’t move or see or feel: when he’s restrained or confined in any way.

But here and now, Kaehlan barely pauses before ducking in again for another quick kiss to the tip of his nose. “Don’t need to see,” he says quietly. “Want you to be able to watch. And, ‘sides. I – I trust you.”

Oh.  _ Oh _ . He doesn’t even know where to begin with this – and how could he? for the few nights they’ve spent together he really hardly knows this man – so Brelyeis falls back on something tried and true. “Idiot.”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Kaehlan responds: the usual reply, but now offered half laughing, half choking on some emotion that Brelyeis doesn’t know how to deal with because he doesn’t know what it is or why it’s suddenly popped up here. “Yes, Brelyeis,  _ yes. _ ”

“You are entirely too amused for a man with his fingers up his own ass,” Brelyeis tells him dryly, and before Kaehlan can come up with some stupid response he casts the evocation. There’s a sharp withdrawn breath from the wood elf, but Brelyeis’s eyes adjust immediately, presenting him with a full-color image of Kaehlan stretched out beside him. Cautiously excited now, Brelyeis leans forward and props his head on Kaehlan’s arm to look over and across his body, and –

_ Oh _ . Really, why haven’t they tried this before? Kaehlan is two knuckles deep inside himself and trembling with the effort of holding still – or maybe with his sudden inability to see – and now Brelyeis is the one who places a gentle hand on the other man’s hip as he sits up, considers how he wants to do this.

“Hands and knees, I think,” he muses, reaching for the glass toy that they’d both kind of pushed aside in the heat of the moment, and he doesn’t even need to say any more before Kaehlan is making an enthusiastic noise of assent behind him, the sheets rustling as he withdraws his fingers and rolls off his side. By the time Brelyeis turns around again, Kaehlan is settling just as he had asked: going to elbows and knees, with his ass in the air for Brelyeis to do exactly as he pleases with it.

Heat pools, low and  _ good _ , and as he kneels up behind Kaehlan, toy in hand, Brelyeis can’t quite keep himself from leaning forward, pressing his own clothed groin to the ass he’s being offered. His paramour jerks in excitement beneath the touch, moaning again, and under cover of the darkness he’s evoked, Brelyeis can  _ see  _ Kaehlan’s head fall forward, his face planting right into a pillow.

“Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck _ – need to find you a harness next, an’ another cock to go with it,” Kaehlan pants, half-laughing again when he’s finally able to raise his head enough to get some air. “Want you behind me, Brelyeis, want you in me, come one, come on-“

“Impatient,” Brelyeis breathes, running the tip of the toy down his taint and back up again before tapping him gently with it. He can feel another rush of his own wetness as Kaehlan swears, one elbow leaving the bed and the arm groping hopelessly behind himself, missing Brelyeis by a country mile and only catching on thin air.

“Yes, impatient, Brelyeis,  _ please _ !”

He traces one more path up the other elf’s taint before pressing in with just the very tip of the toy. “You’re certain you don’t want a little more preparation first?”

“I’m  _ sure _ !” Kaehlan sounds desperate. “Brelyeis, love, please!”

Well. Far be it from him to deny that kind of surety. In dips the tip, and slowly the whole head follows, and beneath Brelyeis’s hands Kaehlan exhales as shakily as if the air has just been punched out of his lungs ( _ more more i can take it nnnnnngh) _ . Then come the ridges and Kaehlan, the absolute madman,  _ shouts _ but also rocks backwards seeking more  _ (brelyeis, brelyeis, brelyeis  _ **_please_ ** _ ) _ as if he isn’t getting fucked quite fast enough, and under cover of darkness Brelyeis can actually watch, aroused as hell, as his paramour’s body slowly takes in the cool glass. To the side, one of Kaehlan’s hands gathers up a fistful of sheets and  _ clenches _ as if they are his only remaining lifeline to the world of the living, and his entire spine rolls beneath Brelyeis’s palm as the toy finally – hah – bottoms out, with only the handle now outside Kaehlan’s body.

His name seems to be one of the few things left that his paramour is able to say. “Brelyeis – Brelyeis, please. . .”

Suddenly a little shaky himself, Brelyeis kneels up again behind him, and as he takes the toy’s handle in a firmer grip, the tips of his flowing sleeves brush against Kaehlan’s shivering skin: the other elf  _ jolts _ as if a cigarette has been taken to his flesh. “ _ Brelyeis _ !”

“The same, I promise. Now. What was all of that again about ‘fuck me good’ or some such ungrammatical nonsense?” His own voice is not unaffected, but at least he can still get out full sentences. And hearing this Kaehlan huffs out a breathless laugh, turning his face out of the pillow to pant: “Fuck – fuck me good, Brelyeis.”

Definitely ungrammatical, but Brelyeis finds that he is still quite happy to oblige. And when his paramour finally collapses in a shivering, boneless mess beneath him, Brelyeis stretches out beside him and guides Kaehlan’s fingers into his trousers next, where he is delighted to discover that the wood elf somehow already knows a few tricks that Brelyeis finds he likes very much.

And before they fall asleep – Kaehlan in all his unabashed nakedness spooned around Brelyeis still half-clothed and wearing the shirt he’d had on for council that same day – the cover of darkness reveals that Kaehlan’s eyes are indeed grey: grey as a storm, a storm that falls calm whenever he’s looking at Brelyeis. Secure in this knowledge, Brelyeis finally lets the evocation of darkness disperse.


	14. the santhoven cadets (T)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written Jan. 23, 2019

 

Kaeh has established a knock by this point: three short taps, two longer ones, against the imposing wooden doors that lead into Brelyeis’s chambers. He thinks that maybe having this set will help Brelyeis know who to expect when he hears it.

But Kaeh himself could  _ never _ have expected the sight that Brelyeis makes when he opens the door tonight – when he asks, brisk and a bit surprised: “Kaehlan?”

Maybe Kaeh is biased, but – Brelyeis  _ always  _ looks stunning. He always appears dressed with meticulous care, complete attention to detail, as if any tiny thing awry in his fine clothing is also a chink in his armor: something that enemies looking to exploit his blindness will try to use against him. And maybe Kaeh is biased, but – that perfection is just one of the many reasons why he fuckin’  _ adores _ undressing Brelyeis. Tugging apart his robes, pulling open his ties, letting down his hair. . . maybe, Kaeh thinks, then Brelyeis will know that there’s at least one person in all this fuckin’ world who doesn’t consider a little untidiness to be weakness, and who appreciates Brelyeis’s power no matter the state of his clothes.

But tonight. Tonight Brelyeis looks fuckin’  _ resplendent,  _ his fine clothing all in blacks that swallow the very light from the sconces throughout the hallway and silvers that reflect that light in shimmering patterns as fine and light as constellations.

Kaeh swallows. Hard.

It takes Brelyeis’s slight tap of impatience to break the spell. “Kaehlan, if that’s you then I do hope you weren’t planning to spend the entire evening in such poignant silence. And Kaehlan, if that isn’t you then I do hope you intend to step back before this door closes in your face.”

He can’t quite swallow a laugh. “It’s – ah, it’s me.”

“Wonderful,” Brelyeis says, dry and, unless Kaeh is utterly deceiving himself, a little breathless. He steps back from the door so that Kaeh can step in, and Kaeh does as implicitly invited, pressing a mute kiss to the crown of Brelyeis’s head as he does.

They have already had a few nights together in this new time, but Kaeh will never grow tired of being able to touch him like this again: soft, fleeting touches just to make sure that Brelyeis is actually there and that he knows Kaeh is here too.

Brelyeis accepts the offering with dignity, maybe even leaning into the touch a little, before he shuts the door behind them and pats Kaeh on the chest to let him get by again. And it is now the easiest thing in the world to follow him on into the next room, his bedroom, and to take a ginger seat on the side of his bed: to watch him, and marvel at him, and wonder what he would like tonight because whatever it is, Kaeh is completely willing to give it to him, and ahhh fuck but 

Brelyeis is just so, uh, so-

“You look so handsome tonight,” he says quietly. “Big day?”

Brelyeis is already unbuttoning the top layer of the ornate robes. “Not really.”

“Let me?” Kaeh offers, standing again and walking to Brelyeis’s side, but his mind is already racing. Not a big day – a big night then? “Brelyeis – if you had other plans tonight you don’t have to let them go because of me.”

“I never know when you’ll show up, I have to make the most of it when you do,” Brelyeis mutters, his fingers still working busily over his buttons, and that isn’t a  _ no I didn’t have other plans,  _ not at all: Kaeh knows he may be a bit dense but he also knows dissembling when he hears it.

“I’m sorry I never know either,” he murmurs contritely, laying his hand gently over Brelyeis’s busy fingers and ready to snatch it away the moment Brelyeis indicates that he doesn’t like this. “What are the plans? If I can ask?”

Not  _ were _ .  _ Are _ . Kaeh won’t stand in his way, and if that means waiting for Brelyeis here or even foregoing a night with him altogether, then it doesn’t fuckin’ matter.  _ It’s all right. _ Anything, everything Kaeh could possibly do to make things actually  _ all right  _ for Brelyeis in this timeline, he will fuckin’ do.

“Of course you can ask, you just did,” Brelyeis tells him, a bit peeved, and Kaeh can’t quite contain a tiny snort of laughter that he tries in vain to muffle against Brelyeis’s fine hair.

“While you think about whether you want to tell me, let me braid your hair?” he offers, a sort of compromise. “Something that will go with tonight’s look.”

From what Kaeh has seen, Brelyeis tends to wear his hair long and loose – a style he can manage alone. But he has Kaeh now, so that means Brelyeis can also have the simple styles that Kaeh knows for keeping hair out of the eyes and mouth while fighting. Not much, but his all the same if he wants them.

“It’s not going to matter if I’m not going,” Brelyeis huffs, but at least he’s stopped unbuttoning.

“Going where?” Kaeh prompts, squeezing his lover’s hands gratefully before reaching a little higher and beginning to divide the hair on the sides of his head into the sections that he’ll need. Brelyeis’s fine hair won’t hold the twists that Kaeh’s does, but it takes to a simple braid just fine, and then Kaeh can pull them back, tuck them over his ears, weave them together into a longer plait that falls gracefully down his back.

“You’ll laugh,” Brelyeis predicts.  

Kaeh hums as he starts working. “Promise I won’t.”

“Tonight’s production of  _ de Bergerac _ .”

There’s a moment’s silence before Brelyeis speaks again. “See, I knew you would judge me.”

“Mmmm?” Kaeh is engrossed in the braids. “Sorry, I – what?” He has to disentangle his mind from the fine hair currently wound in his fingers and recollect the previous conversation instead, but even when he does: “I, ahh, have no idea what that is.”

“An opera,” Brelyeis says simply, but when Kaeh makes an encouraging sound, he quickly expands on what that actually means: thank fuck. “It starts with a performance at a local theater, where the main characters learn of a plot to marry off. . .”

From what Kaeh can tell, a couple of soldiers both love the same noble, and one writes letters to that noble on the other’s behalf while they’re deployed. Romantic, if unrealistic, and he’s about to say so, except that –

Brelyeis tells the story like he enjoys it very much. He even begins to recite one of the soldiers’ speeches by memory, only to stop halfway through as if checking whether Kaeh’s still listening.

Kaeh tugs gently at the second braid as if admonishing: the first is tucked over Brelyeis’s other ear, just awaiting the completion of this one. “What’s next?” he asks gently, and Brelyeis, encouraged, finishes the monologue complete with gestures and little pauses to editorialize on the character’s life decisions and lack of fortitude at this point in the story.

“Sounds like quite a tale,” Kaeh tells him when Brelyeis seems to have run out of story to recount, and he actually means that. It’s beyond stunning to find something else that Brelyeis feels as strongly about as he does the people of this city, Kaeh reflects as he finishes pulling the two braids together down the back of Brelyeis’s head. “I – I hope you enjoy it tonight.”  

Brelyeis freezes beneath his hands. “What? I’m not going.”

“Why not? You shouldn’t skip it just because of me. I’ll still be here when you return.” Kaeh never leaves Brelyeis’s chambers until morning, and even then, only until after he can  _ feel  _ the old man’s impatience and half-serious threats not to allow him back the next time.

“Or. . .” Brelyeis seems to be considering something. “Come with me.”

What? “What?”

“Come with me.” Brelyeis is beginning to sound excited. He turns beneath Kaeh’s hands, and Kaeh just manages to let go of the completed braids in time not to pull his hair. Brelyeis lays one hand on his arm, the other on his chest, rubbing Kaeh’s shirt beneath his fingers as if testing the quality of the cloth. “What are you wearing? This feels like it will do, or if not I may be able to, ah, borrow something from down the hall. . .”

Kaeh is wearing the quality black clothes that they’d stolen from that cottage down in the Underdark. The only time he wears them anymore is when the old man appears to tell him that the coast is clear and tonight is a night he can visit Brelyeis.

“Black shirt, black trousers, belt, and boots,” he tells Brelyeis in confusion. “But you can’t mean that, Brelyeis?”

“Of course I mean it, I’m so tired of going to these damn things alone,” Brelyeis says briskly. “Unless – unless this your polite way of telling me that you’d rather not be within twenty miles of some fusty old theatre.”

His excitement of a second before is gone, and Kaeh hates hates  _ hates _ hearing the light go out of his voice like this. He huffs gently as he captures one of those suddenly drooping hands and brings those fingers to his lips instead of letting it fall completely still.

“Not a no,” he promises. “In fact – yes.  _ Yes _ , Brelyeis.”

The opera itself doesn’t matter in the slightest. The story sounds interesting enough, but Kaeh’s not here to be interested: he’s here for  _ Brelyeis _ and that’s fuckin’ all, if Brelyeis had asked him to walk up to the fuckin’ gallows then Kaeh’s answer would still be the same.

“I’d be so fuckin’ happy to go with you.”


	15. oh hey, i had a night i had a day (M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written Jan. 24, 2019

 

He’s just finishing his preparations when he hears a light step at the doorway to the washroom, and there’s no time to even try and conceal what he’s doing before Brelyeis is standing there, surveying the small chamber with an inscrutable expression. “What is this?”

_This_ is many things. _This_ includes a few lightly-scented candles, secured with the help of one of the chambermaids after many, many reassurances that no, Kaeh really is not so clumsy that he’d set the place on fire, and **_no_** of _course_ they wouldn’t be used on the councilor?!?! Really, what was in the air around here that even his fellow common folk of the capitol got these mad ideas. . .

But the  _ this _ that Brelyeis is asking about also includes the large tub nestled at one side of the room, filled nearly to its brim with warm water that is still steaming gently.  _ This _ includes the soft, thick towel laid out on a shelf just within arm’s reach.  _ This _ definitely includes the bright sprigs of lilac that float atop the water’s surface, swirled here and there by the tiny current that Kaeh has been stirring up with one languid finger; the same sprigs of lilac that have been carefully placed in various strategic places until their light fragrance fills the chamber.

And  _ this  _ also includes Kaeh himself, feet bare but otherwise still fully dressed after he sat down beside the tub for just a moment – only to become lost in a daydream, wondering what Brelyeis’s reaction would be.

“Kaehlan?” Brelyeis prompts, a tiny bit impatient and a tiny bit fond, and Kaeh scrambles to his feet.

“You’re early,” he tells him. Stupidly. “It’s not quite ready yet!”

Brelyeis’s glass eyes seem to have adjusted to the half light by now, for Brelyeis’s head moves just enough to track Kaeh across the room as he finally regains his feet and strides over to press a welcoming kiss to Brelyeis’s hair, the tip of his ear, his jawline, his neck, his chin, his lips.

“Seems ready to me,” Brelyeis contradicts, slightly out of breath, when Kaeh finally moves back to his neck.

“Mmmmm.” Kaeh’s too busy turning his cheek to lie on Brelyeis’s shoulder, taking advantage of the new access this angle affords him to Brelyeis’s neck, to give much more of an answer than this. 

“Absolute menace,” Brelyeis breathes. “And might I inquire as to the occasion?”

“No occasion.” Well no, actually, that’s not quite right. “Just thought you might like it.” 

“And so you pestered my staff into telling you how to run a bath properly,” Brelyeis guesses, a tiny spark of laughter in his voice.

“And so I pestered your staff into telling me how to run a bath properly,” Kaeh murmurs, finding it much easier to simply repeat Brelyeis’s excellent and educated guess instead of formulating a new sentence.

“The lilacs are new.”

“It took some work but Bontempe finally admitted that you seemed to like them,” Kaeh admits, a little sheepish as he concedes that his battle to ingratiate himself with Brelyeis’s valet is ongoing. “Not as much as you like peonies, he says, but I’m still saving up for some of those.”

“And it’s easier to bribe the servants for information than to simply ask me what I like?” Brelyeis sounds like he can’t quite decide yet whether he’s irritated or amused by this, and Kaeh smiles against his neck.

“Easier? Hah! They’re a tough crowd, they close ranks around you and won’t let a gods-damn thing slip until they’re sure why a nosy bastard is asking.” The human valet Bontempe, for instance, can’t possibly be even a third of Brelyeis’s age, but somehow he’s almost as protective as Kaeh imagines that a father would be. And while in theory Kaeh heartily approves – the more people Brelyeis has on his side the better – well, he has yet to fully persuade Bontempe that Kaeh himself really isn’t here to hurt Brelyeis. “The only thing that’s easier about talking to them is that then I find out about the things you really like and I can surprise  _ you _ .”

“And that’s important to you?” Brelyeis asks quietly, and Kaeh snorts: yes of course, next question.

“Very important.” He pulls away from Brelyeis’s shoulder, beaming down at him softly. “Now. If your bath gets cold my life is forfeit to your menace of a valet, so. Come sit down.”

But Brelyeis isn’t actually quite ready to sit in the bath yet: he’s just down to his inner layers of clothing, the rest likely on the floor outside, and barefoot, as he tends to be when in his own chambers away from prying eyes. It’s the work of a second for Kaeh to take the hem of his undershirt and hum a wordless request for permission: Brelyeis snorts, not a  _ no _ but not quite a  _ yes _ yet either.

“I’m quite capable of undressing myself. You know, that might be the one piece of common ground you and Bontempe share: the belief that I’m a floundering fool in sartorial matters.”

Kaeh scoffs, gently. No: his only common ground with the valet is their concern for Brelyeis himself. “Can’t speak for Bontempe, but  _ I  _ know you can do it. Just really, really like touching you.”

Beneath his hands he can feel a slight shiver run through Brelyeis’s belly. “ _ Well _ .”  His lover’s voice has gone slightly breathless. “Hurry up, then, it would be nice if the water was still warm by the time I’m ready to get into it.”

With a wordless nod of agreement, Kaeh undoes his buttons as quickly and carefully as he can: much faster now than he had been the first time. He ducks in for a kiss as he pushes the two sides of the shirt apart, exposing Brelyeis’s chest and belly to the cool air: Brelyeis gasps as Kaeh palms a tit with one hand, thumbing gently across the bud at its tip. Kaeh smiles against his mouth and lets that palm slide down further still, cupping his groin gently and grinding the heel of his own hand against Brelyeis ever so slightly while sliding two fingers between his lips: just petting him for the moment, just playing. But Brelyeis’s growing interest is already evident against his fingers.

“Disgusting,” Brelyeis breathes, shivering beneath his touch as he grips both of Kaeh’s shoulders. His undershirt hangs off his arms and his breeches are undone, and the candlelight  _ shines  _ on all the beautiful skin peeking through the dishevelment of his clothing.

“Fuckin’ stunning,” Kaeh contradicts him, hoarse now but also as gentle as he knows how to be. “Stunning, Brelyeis, so damn good I just want you in bed right now-“

“Bath,” Brelyeis prompts, leaning forward to knock their foreheads together gently, and Kaeh snorts out a tiny laugh at the reminder. His fingers are recalled from their exploration so that he can push Brelyeis’s underclothes the rest of the way off his frame, though Kaeh does offer the second tit a soft bite all its own in apology for ignoring it earlier.

“ _ Kaehlan _ !” Brelyeis is laughing now, even as the slight breathlessness is back.

“I know, I know,  _ bath _ ,” Kaeh grumbles, slightly muffled. But as he pulls back again, it’s quite suddenly his turn to be struck breathless.

The only thing more erotic, more sensual than Brelyeis half-clothed and gasping for breath beneath Kaeh’s hands is Brelyeis naked and confident in that nakedness – as he is now, standing there with his arms crossed beneath his tits and grumbling that Kaeh is blocking his way. It’s so good, it’s  _ so fuckin’ good _ to see him like this, rather than worried what Kaeh thinks of him or his body, that Kaeh whines wordlessly for one last kiss - and a kiss that he gets - before he’s stepping aside to let Brelyeis at long last reach his bath.

And Kaeh can only watch, still wordless, as Brelyeis steps into the tub with all the grace and confidence of a – you know what, Kaeh doesn’t even know, because there are no comparisons that could ever really capture all that Brelyeis is or all that Brelyeis does. He steps into the steaming water as if he belongs there, and maybe it’s just Kaeh but the water seems to lap suggestively up his ankles, his calves, his thighs and higher, higher, higher as Brelyeis sinks into the water with a sigh that sounds orgasmic in its own right.

There’s an animal moan in the air for a moment, and it’s only when Brelyeis opens one eyelid to peer at him that Kaeh realizes this sound came from him.

“Enjoying yourself already?” Brelyeis asks languidly, seeming completely recovered from his arousal at being undressed and played with. He raises his legs lazily so that his knees just barely breach the surface of the water, two blue islands amidst a sea of bathwater and lilac blossoms – and then he just  _ lets his legs fall apart _ . Kaeh knows that if he looked – or, gods help him,  _ reached in _ – he’d quickly find that warm and pulsing handhold between Brelyeis’s legs, and Brelyeis could simply  _ close his legs around Kaeh’s hand and keep him there. . . _

“Will you be joining me?” Brelyeis asks casually, as if he hadn’t just completely wrecked Kaeh’s higher brain functions.

It’s almost all Kaeh can do to shake his head and form a few coherent words. “I’ll be here. Right here.” He kind of collapses to a seat beside the tub in mute demonstration. “In the room, but. Not in the tub.”

“Oh?” Brelyeis sounds amused again. “Why ever not?”

“ ‘S supposed to be relaxing for you,” Kaeh reminds him distractedly, finally tearing his gaze away from the surface of the water, where Brelyeis is now gently swinging his knees open and closed, open and closed, creating an eddy of steaming bathwater and sprightly lilacs between which Kaeh can still catch those tantalizing glimpses of his body. “Wouldn’t be much relaxing or cleaning going on if I was in there with you,” Kaeh admits.

“Why, Kaehlan.” The hypnotic movement of his knees stops and Brelyeis drapes his arms over the sides next, exposing his tits now as well as his knees. He also leans back against the head of the tub, a blissful sigh escaping him as he relaxes into the water. “Are you saying that you would seduce me in my bath?” he murmurs.

Fuck, sometimes Brelyeis talks about things like this as if he doesn’t realize that it works the other way around as well: as if he still doesn’t believe that Kaeh finds him a stunning man, as if he still doesn’t know that Kaeh will fuck him or be fucked by him and live with him or die for him and every fuckin’ thing in between, so.

So.

“Maybe I would,” Kaeh tells him, and there’s no mistaking the rasp in his voice now, because Brelyeis’s eyelids flutter open again immediately at the sound. “Or – or maybe, Brelyeis, maybe you’d seduce  _ me _ .”

There’s a split second as Brelyeis’s glass eyes readjust to the half-light, but the second he can tell that they have, Kaeh is leaning in to cup Brelyeis’s cheek in one hand and kiss him desperately, a drowning soul in need of air even though Brelyeis is the one half underwater. And one breath of him this way isn’t anywhere near enough: Kaeh needs another, and another, and another, and in the bath Brelyeis’s knees fall apart again, quite unconsciously this time. 

Candlelight plays on the water, light on every ripple of liquid as Brelyeis’s hips buck up and send new currents swirling; lilacs brush feather-soft against Kaeh’s elbow as he leans further in across the side of the tub, struggling to reach as much of Brelyeis as he can despite the porcelain and the water and the flowers that stand between them.

Beneath Kaeh’s hand, his lips, Brelyeis eventually seems to shake himself out of this dreamlike exchange. “Up, up.”

“Mmmm?”

“Water’s cooled, I’m getting up.” And so he does, rising out of the water in all his naked glory, and this close to Kaeh, at this height above Kaeh, even the lilacs aren’t enough to mask the smell of his arousal. Droplets of water on his skin catch and refract the candlelight, and bits of purple blossom bloom against his skin like delicate bruises; every step he takes across the tiled floor is punctuated by a tiny, wet sound that shoots straight to Kaeh’s groin, an indomitable pressure that builds and builds until he could almost explode with the helpless anticipation of it.

“You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden,” Brelyeis remarks, wrapping himself in the towel placed there for him. Kaeh mourns the lost view fiercely, but appreciates the fact that Brelyeis will at least be warm and dry now.

“Watching you,” he whispers. 

“Hmmmph.” Brelyeis hitches the towel around himself a little more. “ _ That _ doesn’t sound worrisome at all.”

“Want you so, so fucking much,” Kaeh admits quietly, and Brelyeis flushes, just a little, probably hearing only the  _ want to fuck _ part and not the w _ ant to hold you, want to stay with you, want to love you _ that Kaeh’s only just barely holding back himself.

“Bedroom’s right here,” Brelyeis says briskly, recovering just enough of his usual poise to do so, and he isn’t even halfway out of the washroom before he lets the towel slip from his shoulders and pool in his wake as he continues to walk away. “Well?” he calls back, and maybe it’s Kaeh hearing things but he hopes not because it sounds like there’s hope in the question. 

So Kaeh stands as quickly as he can, given the way most of his blood has pooled in one place, and follows Brelyeis.

As he always will.  

 


	16. every time, just like the last (M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written Jan. 26, 2019
> 
> (cw for this one: suicidal ideation, casual discussions of murder, unreliable narrator)

The bastard broke my fucking nose. Out of everything that’s happened, everything I need to stop and sit and think through,  _ that’s _ what’s driving me mad every time I get to it. And it might not seem like a lot, not compared to being called a murderer or to losing my entire mind bad enough I could only fight and drool, but –

I’ll work back from there. It’s connected, it is, it really is.

Because my nose? Moth broke it first. Moth took an elbow to my face when we were fighting for Brelyeis’s life on the road back to Orwick and Mourninglight charmed him, but. That broken nose was a scar that I was proud to wear because Moth was so worried, after, and, I just. . . I remember smiling at him through the blood as I set the damn thing myself; remember scheming about getting him to fuck one of us senseless, Brelyeis or me, when we’d gotten to safety; remember holding on to Brelyeis so tight the entire ride back to Orwick because we’d near about lost him but we didn’t, he was there and so were we.

And now Moth is gone. A good man, and a good friend – fuck knows I don’t know many of either – and he’s dead, Nikusha says, in the collapse of Home. So that broken nose – not only was it something I was proud of, something to remind me of a hopeless battle won, but it was also all that I had left of Moth. And now it’s gone too, just like him, covered over by a new break that means nothing and someday a new scar that will mean nothing either.

Just thinking about that should make me so angry that I can’t even see right, and it does. But at the same time – the fact that my nose was broken at all might mean I was wrong, and  _ that  _ is really what has been stopping me cold.

_ Murderer _ , my best friend has been calling me for two days running now.  _ Murderer,  _ and I just look away because I don’t want to fight with him. I’m even trying not to fight with our other newcomer either.

_ Murderer _ . Why yes, actually. Yes I am. What do they think half this entire year has been, besides murdering people we suspected or who got in our way or we were pointed toward? What do they think my entire career has been, besides murdering people who happened to be wearing the ‘wrong’ colors and standing on the ‘wrong’ side, opposite where I was? What the actual hell is one more life in a tally that already spans almost two hundred fuckin’ years?

_ Because he was a friend, Kaehlan!  _ No. No, he wasn’t. He was someone we ended up with by accident, someone who tagged along with us and was helpful, sure, but also someone who it turns out was responsible for a lot of the shit we came here to deal with in the first place.

Want to hear what I think? I think that there are two options in this world: fair, and unfair.

Fair is when people get what they deserve for hurting others or helping others or keeping themselves to themselves. Fair means that what you did comes back to you, and no one stronger or richer takes what you’ve earned or you deserve from you. So,  _ unfair _ means that you don’t get what you’ve earned or that high folk take what you’ve earned. Everything has a price, and fair means that you pay it; unfair means you don’t, you’re paying either more or less than that price.  

And the world isn’t fair; neither is life. So we don’t get fair unless we fight for it ourselves, and in the end, sometimes it’s the best you can hope for. Not a happy ending, not the one you wanted, but the one that was at least a little bit fair to someone.

Fair for River, who died because his god could only talk to him when he was off his head, and eventually the medicine stopped being enough to keep the common sicknesses at bay. Fair never came for River: the closest he got was that it was me who killed him, and that I made it as quick and easy as I knew how.

Fair for Moth, who walked away from me after I nearly got myself killed, and him and Mort unmasked, being a stupid fool for not lying, not bowing. Fair never came for Moth, who got so sick and sad that he tried to kill himself, that he couldn’t see or didn’t care that I was offering him everything I knew how to: my bow, my body, my trust. And now he’s gone too, sent off to Home and swallowed by Chaos, and someone has to pay the price for that too, I just don’t know who it is yet.

Fair for Mort, who died because a fuckin’ soldier couldn’t fuckin’ field-dress a wound right. Fair still hasn’t come for Mort, though at least there’s still a chance it could. Someday I wonder if I’ll wade across a river and it won’t be grass tugging at my heels but Adaire, finally deciding to claim his blood oath against me: pull me under, rip me apart, stain the river red for a few minutes before the currents wash the blood away. And  _ fuck it  _ but I want to live now, I want to live  _ so much _ , but. . . What’s fair is a life for a life, mine for Mort’s: the price has to be paid either at his hands or at his lover’s, and how can I complain about wanting to live when I’ve been the one standing in Adaire’s place, knowing that my lover is dead and the man who just ripped my world apart is still out there, breathing easy?

So freezing in the river when I feel a touch isn’t stupid, and it doesn’t mean that I want to die like Moth did, once. It’s just what’s fair, and how can I scream that I want fair for Brelyeis and Moth and Mort and River and Raf and everyone I knew in the time that’s now gone, if I can’t steel myself to pay what  _ I _ owe?

To Voran, then.

He created the Order, who in turn created a ‘god’ and tortured my lover to death.

How the hell can anyone deny what would be fair here?

_ But he didn’t create the Order to become evil, Kaehlan! _ Maybe, maybe not, but that evil is what the Order became, and the seeds of what it is now must have been present in whatever fuckin’ thing he started in the first place. And when I prayed to the old man for the first time, and he told me to tell him exactly what I was asking for, I told him:  _ I want to kill everyone who made Brelyeis suffer. I want them to feel some of what he did, the way he died. _

Which was alone. In excruciating pain. And doubting that he had even been remembered.

_ Everyone who ever made it so that he died that way _ , I told the old man. Which means Hames and Folke: Calder too, though he’s in a different club of fuckery. Rugo. Any other minions of the Order.

And Voran.

And, actually, me.

_ So _ . Voran. He’s lucky, actually, that that was all I could do: refuse to take his hand in the dark, and let him make his own choice to wander off into the night following phantoms. Kinder then he deserved, I thought at the time: better for him, certainly. If the other two hadn’t been there in that lich’s cabin that day, I would have fought Voran then and there, and  _ damn  _ his focus,  _ damn  _ his casting, because we don’t get fair unless we fight for it. But Mort was there, Nikusha was there, and fighting Voran in the moment I learned who he was would have meant unintended casualties and that wouldn’t have been fair to them.

And not only that, but. Once, the old man told me a bit about the men he’d been married to. It was awful and awkward and ended with him kicking me out into the streets of Santhoven to stand between Brelyeis and a knife because I’d accidentally opened so many old wounds. But before he did, the old man told me a bit about his husbands. It sounded like the first one he’d actually loved.

That was Voran. The same man who sat at that goddamn table and told us that he’d been the one who founded the Order. The one who gave an order to drag Riel’s people out from their riverside homes, in a fuckin’ massacre that left folk dumped in piles, still breathing even as they died by inches.  

You don’t do that to someone who loves you. You don’t do that shit to someone you say you love too. You just – you don’t. You  _ don’t _ .

And your intentions aren’t good enough. If folk you care for are hurt because of you, bellyaching about how you didn’t mean to hurt them isn’t good enough: it doesn’t pay anything, it doesn’t fix anything. Bellyache or say sorry or don’t, but that’s not enough to make things fair for them. You want fair, then you fix the hurt you did, and intentions be damned.

I didn’t mean to kill Mort, but I did. I didn’t mean to leave Brelyeis undefended, but I did. So I don’t really get to say that I don’t have to pay for either death. I only get to decide whether I’m going to be fair or not, both to my best friend and to the man I love.

And Voran said he didn’t order his men to kill Riel’s folk, but that’s what happened. Sure the officer who took it that way needed to pay too, but so did Voran. And now he has. Fair.

So. Murderer? Yes. Sorry? No. Only for upsetting Mort and making him doubt me, and for making things harder for him now that Nikusha doubts. Don’t know her well enough to care what she thinks all that much, but she’s a friend of the old man’s and Mort seems to like her so I guess I have to care a little.

Easy enough, right? But now my nose is broken, and the same blow that wiped away my last trace of Moth is the same one that fuckin’ put my mind right after that fuckin’ demon reduced me to just a body waving a sword.  

~~ I couldn’t have loved Brelyeis the way he deserves like that. I couldn’t have paid fair in all the ways I still owe. And I know this. I know this. ~~

I don’t  _ know _ that it was him, Voran. Not for sure. But a punch like that? Not the old man’s style, and I’ve never seen him wearing the kinds of rings that cut me up like this.

Because, earlier this year, I learned that there’s something beyond fair and unfair. I don’t know if there’s a word for it – it might be mercy? – but I’d never seen it for myself before Brelyeis.

He’d contracted me, and Mort, and Raf, to go north and find a glass orb in a tomb. We didn’t manage that. Then I kidnapped him – admittedly to get him medical aid after helping him defend himself, but still – and he lost his eyes, bared his soul, and learned his whole plan was doomed.

Fair would have been for Brelyeis to demand that Mort and I continue in our contract to him until we’d done as we’d signed our X’s to do, or else fulfilled our service by protecting him adequately or some shit.

But that’s not what he asked, that’s not what he did. Brelyeis just, he just –

He gave our lives back to us. Told me and Mort that our contracts were closed and we were free, and Moth should return to Santhoven, and he would continue north alone because this was too dangerous now and this is not what we’d signed up to do.

That’s not how fair works, but that’s what Brelyeis did. He showed me that there was something better than fair, that sometimes prices can be let go. And he did it again when he –

He did it again when he died. When he told me that it was  _ all right,  _ that he didn’t blame me even when he thought that I had forgotten him and left him to die. Brelyeis. . .  

And fair, for Voran if that was him who broke my nose and healed my mind, should’ve been to leave me the way I was, struck dumb and drooling. And yet here I am, yelling this into the woods because I have words again, I have thoughts again – fucking hell,  _ I might be able to go home to Brelyeis _ . And this is all way beyond fair for what I did to Voran, dropping his hand and letting him drift away.

I don’t understand. I don't understand.  _ I don’t understand. _

 


	17. it's the eye of the morvudd, and the thrill of the fight (T)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written Jan. 27, 2019

 

Two hundred miles walking to reach Santhoven? Forget that – they make it three  _ days _ , and  _ barely  _ that, with Kaeh and Nikusha bickering over the compass even though it points in the same direction now when either of them holds it. Three days, and then Mort has had enough of this, going to stand at the side of the road and waving for the next cart driver they see to stop. It doesn’t even take much of a bribe to persuade the man to take them as far east as he’ll go.

But does the bickering stop? No. Does the sudden free time to contemplate sore legs and sorer tempers make things better? Also no.

“This isn’t going to be any faster,” Kaeh grouses, crossing his arms over his chest.

“ ‘s that what yer Brelyeis tells ya, durin’ yer fun little night-time visits?” Nikusha asks languidly from the other side of the cart, where she’s leaning against the side with the end of her shawl thrown over her eyes.

Kaeh growls. Nikusha titters. And Mort knows this could  _ easily _ last the rest of the day.

“Why ain’t you a barbarian?”

The question at least distracts Kaeh, who looks over at him in confusion. “Who, me?”

“No, Nikusher.” Mort restrains the urge to facepalm. “Fuck it, you’re dense. Yes, you!”

Kaeh doesn’t seem to take any offense from Mort being the one to call him dense. “Because I was trained to be a fighter, I guess?”

“Barbarian ain’t somethin’ you’re trained t’ be, not really. You either have the instinct or you don’t, and from the way your hackles go up at the slightest scent of shit, I woulda sworn you had somethin’ of it in ya.”

“We all  _ wish _ y’ had somethin’ in ya,” Nikusha comments lightly, but Kaeh ignores her. For fuckin’ once.

“That’s strange,” he muses. “How would I know?”

“If you could do somethin’ with that rage of yours, I guess,” Mort says, shrugging. “Or maybe if you could  _ learn _ how to do somethin’ with it.”  

“Thought you just said being a barbarian wasn’t something I could train for,” Kaeh says, with a shit-eating grin that would make anyone in this whole fuckin’ county want to slap him across his idiot face.

“You shut the fuck up and get over here,” Mort sighs, standing up and walking over to the edge of the cart bed.

“Why?” Kaeh asks, even as he stands up and follows.

Mort doesn’t answer. Just pushes him off the back of the cart and into the dusty tracks behind them. Kaeh splutters as the cart rattles off without him and Nikusha laughs, a bright magpie chatter of sound.

“The hell?” Kaeh calls after them, standing up and jogging after the cart, which – either luckily or sadly – isn’t going fast enough to leave him behind completely.

“You feel anything?” Mort asks, planting his feet to make it clear that the damn elf isn’t getting back up here for a bit.

“Pain!” Kaeh says as he finally catches up with the cart again, sounding a bit unhappy but still not taking this as seriously as Mort means it.

“That’s my day made!” Nikusha says happily, pulling out the instrument that she’d purchased in the last town. Neither Mort nor Kaeh have any idea what it is, but the number of strings seems to make her happy, and she’s been strumming it at odd times of day ever since. Now, as Kaeh runs behind the cart and Mort rubs his eyes, she plucks a couple experimental bars.

“No, you fucker,” Mort tells Kaeh, kicking his fingers off the board when Kaeh grabs it, trying to haul himself back in. “You feel anything in your head? And don’t say pain again or I’ll have to hop down there and really give you some.”

“Like you could,” Kaeh scoffs, even as he draws his smashed fingers back with a grimace. “But somethin’ in my head? No?”

Every barbarian will feel the rage differently, so there’s nothing in particular that he can tell the damn elf to be looking for. Some, he’s heard, feel it as a spark, or a switch being flipped on, or a blinding burst of light.

“Somethin’ about to go off if you’d let it,” he tries again. “Yeah?”

“I’ve been fighting longer than you’ve been alive,” Kaeh says conversationally, still jogging behind.

“And you’ve also been an idiot for longer than I’ve been alive,” Mort grumbles, just as Nikusha chimes in, still strumming: “Longer don’t mean better ‘cept in specific circumstances, an’ I hear ya got problems wi’ those!”

“Stop it,” Kaeh growls, and now it’s Nikusha who cackles and ignores him. But something in the elf’s voice cracks, and Mort thinks,  _ might as well give this one more shot. _

“Think about somethin’ that’s beyond irritating. Somethin’ that makes you madder than anythin’ else in the world.”

“Like engagement rings!” Nikusha sing-songs.

Kaeh’s eyes narrow and he jogs after them a little faster, but a little anger ain’t no rage. “Someone else givin’ him flowers?” Mort tries.

“Folke?” Nikusha asks gleefully.

Kaeh is silent now and his feet come down against the road a little harder with each phrase they try, but there’s still nothing like the rage. Maybe he doesn’t have the instinct after all, Mort thinks, rubbing his eyes with a sigh.  

“Dammit,” he tells Nikusha. “I’d’a thought somethin’ in there would do it.”

“Same,” she says casually. “Maybe describe it t’ him? Worth a shot. Hey, Kaehlan! Folke was gonna give your boyfriend a pretty nice ring! Gold, wi’ an opal, an’ –“

Mort isn’t looking anymore, but he distinctly hears the pounding footsteps behind them stop. A muffled scream rises behind them, and when he turns to look, Kaeh is off the road, using that good steel sword from Piper to hack the shit out of some poor bush that happened to be within reach.

“Stop the cart, but be ready to take off again soon as I say!” Mort tells the driver hurriedly, leaping down as soon as it slows. Dammit but it sucks to be right sometimes: with their luck, the fuckin’ elf is a berserker or some shit.

“Feels like t’ occasion for a song o’ sorts,” Nikusha offers, peering over the side of the cart with interest. She strums a few more bars. “How’s this?  _ It’s t’ eye of t’ morvudd, an’ t’ thrill of t’ fight _ ,  _ risin’ up t’ th’ challenge of a rival!  _ What set him off, y’ think?”

“We’ll figure that out once we get him to stop,” Mort says grimly, expecting an  _ interesting  _ scuffle to get the idiot elf’s head back in a calm place. But he doesn’t even have to do that: Kaeh seems to recognize his footsteps coming up behind him, and he’s already lowering his sword as Mort draws even with him.

“He used to wear an opal,” Kaeh says, soft and lost, staring at the remains of the bush as if he doesn’t understand how they got to be in this state. “I think he likes them. How would that bastard know that he likes them?”

Mort never saw the councilor wearing no opal and he ain’t gonna ask. Ain’t gonna point out either that since they’re councilors, Folke and Brelyeis have probably known each other for years, definitely long enough to guess at preferences in jewelry. Not Mort’s business, and he really really  _ really  _ doesn’t want it to be, please and thank you.

Better focus on something else.  “Feelin’ somethin’ in your head now?”

“Little bit, it’s going away now,” Kaeh says, still sounding lost.

Mort pats his arm, gingerly. “That there’s the rage, you beautiful idiot. Looks like you’ve got a bit of it after all. Come an’ get back in the cart, ok? Long way to Santhoven.”

Kaeh nods, wordless again as they head back for the cart, and suddenly Mort’s not sure if that’s better or worse than the rage of a few moments before.


	18. untitled (E)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written Feb 19, 2019

For a brief instant when he wakes, Kaeh doesn’t know where he is. Somewhere above his head, he can hear the rain, tap-tap-tapping away, but he can’t feel its icy touch, or the cold or the damp that from experience he knows always accompany it. And somehow there’s a blanket, softer than the typical army issue, pulled up to his shoulders, and his left arm is numb from a warm weight pressing the limb down into a soft surface.

Even stranger still, Kaeh isn’t panicked by any of this. His heart doesn’t jolt at finding himself enclosed by wooden walls, or his back actually pressed up against one, or his arm trapped and immobile. He isn’t startled by hearing another set of breathing joining his, somewhat muffled by the blanket pulled close around them both but still audible beneath the soft sounds of the rain. In fact, his heart only jolts – as it always does – when that second of paralysis passes and everything comes back to him in a rush.

Where he is. Why he’s there. Who he’s with.  

Because these wooden walls are his loft, and his back is only pressed against one of those walls in order to make the most of the space afforded by a small mattress. And that weight on his arm, that breathing against his chest, is – is coming from Brelyeis.  

Who’s still asleep, burrowed into Kaeh and the blanket and their warmth, with his fine hair fallen across his face and stirring gently with every breath he takes: in and out and in and out in the softest, sleepiest huffs of air imaginable.

Seeing and feeling and hearing him like this, Kaeh’s heart just about stops, crushed between surges of emotion so strong that Kaeh can almost  _ see _ them, painted across the insides of his eyelids; can practically  _ taste  _ them, spilled like sweetness and warmth across his tongue.

Brelyeis is  _ here _ . After everything that has happened, after everything that they have been through, he is still curled up here beside Kaeh, sleeping this soundly because he felt safe, and warm, and comfortable enough to do so.

Seeing and feeling and hearing Brelyeis like this, there is a moment when affection and gratitude and wonder swell and threaten to overwhelm Kaeh. When his entire body seems suffused with something greater, something stronger, than the sum of those three parts.

He knows exactly what this feeling is called – it’s a difficult one to forget, after all. And few enough have ever made him feel it at all. 

A little overwhelmed, Kaeh leans down to press his nose and mouth into that fine hair. To nestle a little closer against the body that’s trapping his left arm. To slide his other arm, the one that’s still free, across the gentle rise and fall of ribs so that it can circle a proud back, slide beneath and join his other arm in its entrapment so that he’s embracing Brelyeis as completely as he can, pulling the man he loves as close as he possibly can.

And maybe a tiny sound escapes Kaeh as he does this, or else the bed creaks just enough to give him away. Certainly Brelyeis must feel his bedmate shifting – the soft entanglement of arms and legs, the tentative touch of nose and mouth, the soft warmth of breath across the top of his head. And certainly he has always, as far as Kaeh has known, been able to tell when he is being watched as closely as Kaeh is watching him now. 

Whatever the cause, he grumbles a little, and Kaeh pulls his head back just in time to watch his eyelids flutter, lashes rising and falling in microscopic movements as Brelyeis slowly surfaces from sleep, climbing back into this attic loft, this softly-lit and rainy morning, here with Kaeh.

“I was sleeping,” he grumbles.

Whatever Kaeh was feeling before, it doubles,  _ triples _ – grows,  _ swells –  _ when Brelyeis speaks. Kaeh adores his voice, even when – maybe  _ particularly _ when – it’s sleepy and rough and slightly grumpy.

“I know,” he promises, quiet and apologetic. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Brelyeis shifts minutely, grunting as he rolls his shoulders. Even now that he’s woken, though, his eyes remain obstinately shut, as if enough stubbornness will help him recapture that elusive sleep. “Yet here we are, regardless of whatever fine plans you had to the contrary,” he mutters. 

“What“ – a startlingly massive yawn contorts his face, despite his best efforts to stifle it – “aaaah. What are you going to do about it?”

“Still thinking about that.” Now that he’s seen Brelyeis is awake, Kaeh leans back in, pressing a soft kiss to each of those shut eyelids before rubbing his own nose gently against Brelyeis’s. He watches with delight as Brelyeis stifles a smile and goes for a theatrical pout instead, shifting a little more so that the back of his head is pillowed in the crook of Kaeh’s left arm and his face is angled up towards Kaeh’s – though his eyes still remain shut, as if he’ll be getting back to sleep any minute now.

“Not good enough,” he murmurs, the mock pout sliding into a smirk, and  _ gods damn _ but Kaeh loves this man more than he knows how to say sometimes.

“Damn,” Kaeh whispers back, unable to keep from beaming. “ ‘ll have to try something else, then.”

And of course, _something else_ turns out to be a kiss – or rather, _several_ of them, as many as Kaeh can possibly give. He makes his way down that beloved face slowly, leisurely, as if they have all the time in the world ( _and_ _maybe now they do_ ), beginning with a cheerful peck for the tip of that aristocratic nose before rolling into a smooch for each delectable cheek, a detour down for that proud chin, a teasing glance at each corner of the mouth, and then a silly, winding path back up the nose and its bridge to a forehead that has to be nuzzled free from its covering of bed-mussed hair.

Brelyeis pokes him in the gut. “You missed something, idiot.”

“I did?” And he’s laughing – he always ends up laughing – as he ducks back down for Brelyeis’s lips.

Laughter becomes a study in leaving Brelyeis breathless, an ongoing experiment in how many times Kaeh can taste, nip, caress, explore, before there’s nothing more to be learned. But so far, he’s never found that limit – every gasp, every moan, every struggle to catch a breath that Kaeh hears from Brelyeis in these moments only drives his hunger to cause more, feel more, hear more.

“Better?” he whispers finally, pulling back just far enough that he can lean his forehead against Brelyeis’s as he does.

And from this vantage point, Kaeh gets to watch in delight as Brelyeis finally, finally opens his eyes. In the relative darkness of the loft – beneath the blanket of clouds and rain outside, and the great fluffy monstrosity of a blanket that Kaeh has pulled over them both in here – Brelyeis’s eyes track, ever so slightly, and Kaeh knows that he is being seen, even just a little.

“Slightly better,” Brelyeis allows, blinking and slightly breathless.

“ _ Hooray _ ,” Kaeh whispers, and there’s a bit of a rumble tingeing his voice as he ducks down for just one more, but in this moment he can’t even bring himself to care.

“Oh, and how could I have forgotten?” But of course he hadn’t actually forgotten. Just waited until, like now, he can say it and watch the smile break across Brelyeis’s face. “Good morning, handsome.”

~ ~ ~

Merit, the apothecary’s apprentice who mixes up the old man’s recipes for Brelyeis, had been the one who told Kaeh about this place. Her mother runs the bakery beneath it, she had said, and there’s an attic loft that she rents out to quiet folk, folk who won’t give her trouble over the unusual color of her skin or the crowned horns that peek through her curly hair. And for a moment Kaeh hadn’t been sure whether Merit was describing herself or her mother, but while he’d tried to puzzle it out, eventually giving up with a shrug, he could feel Merit watching him out of the corner of her eyes.

“Any particular reason why you’re telling me this?” Kaeh had asked her, as he leaned forward on his elbows against the worn but flawlessly clean apothecary’s counter.

“Because,” Merit had told him absently, still measuring and crushing and stirring with her back to him as if she didn’t particularly care how he reacted. This of course had been a ruse: Kaeh had seen enough of them to know one when he saw it. “You seem like the sort who wouldn’t give her too much trouble.”

Kaeh had snorted. He hadn’t been able to stop himself.

“You saying you would?” Merit had asked quietly, still not quite looking at him.

“Nah.” It wasn’t that. It was more that: “Just, this is probably the first time that anyone has ever said I’m not too much trouble.”  

“Well, I mean.” Merit’s hands had remained steady as she measured out the light green potion into little vials. Even now, Kaeh remains grateful that the recipe doesn’t produce a blue liquid: he doesn’t know if he could take seeing another lover’s lips stained that color, though Brelyeis’s reasons are so much different than River’s had been. “If you’re just gonna argue with me and you aren’t in the market for a quiet little place down here to call your own, you could always say so, and we’ll just have to keep our eyes open for another silly fella in need of a love nest.”

A place of his own hadn’t even been on Kaeh’s mind, when he’d found a job with the city guard here in the lower wards of Santhoven. The barracks are good enough for him, and always have been, always will be. But, the way that Merit had called the place a possible  _ love nest  _ – and the way she had described her mother’s shop when pressed for a bit more information – finally knocked the sense into Kaeh all at once that, wait. This wouldn’t just be a place for him, if he took it. It would be, it  _ could  _ be, a place for Brelyeis too.

And that’s what had settled it.

“I’ll take a look,” he’d told Merit when she’d handed him the little box of vials, neatly wrapped. “No promises, but if it’s everything you say – maybe I’ll take it.” She’d shaken her head at him and given him the address, telling him to come back tomorrow and  _ maybe  _ they wouldn’t have rented it out already by then.

And the next day? The second he’d seen the discreet door and stairs at the back of the building, Kaeh had known that this could work: Brelyeis wouldn’t have to wade through strangers, or hide his face, or deal with crowds, unless he chose to.  

And then Merit’s mother had led him up those stairs and unlocked the door, and Kaeh had ducked inside to find a warm, sunlit little room with its own stove and a skylight and a window and a bedframe, all smelling of whatever she was baking downstairs at the moment, and the only questions he’d had for her had been  _ how much are you asking  _ and  _ when can I get in? _

Harmony – a tiefling woman whose bright cheeks and chapped hands were an even darker maroon than her daughter’s – had looked at him strangely then, and even more strangely the next week when he showed up with just a bundle of clothes and a bedroll and his weapons, but she hadn’t pressed. And as the weeks had passed, a wooden dining set and a mattress and a great soft armchair gradually joining the bedframe, Kaeh had eventually swallowed his nerves and stepped into the shop below the loft to ask her about a second key – only for Harmony to scold him for taking this long to visit, and to press a warm sweet bun into his hand and promise that she would get a second key made up for him only if he’d tell her who it was for.

To this day Merit, who happened to witness this exchange, insists that Kaeh blushed. Kaeh, who was  _ also _ present thank you very much, insists that he did not.

_ For my lover _ , he’d told Harmony, and yes, Kaeh can admit that he probably sounded a bit sheepish. Why wouldn’t he, though – a tall soldier, asking a diminutive baker for a favor while he rubbed at the back of his neck in mixed embarrassment and hope.

_ I want him to know that this place is as much his home as it is mine. _

He didn’t understand til later why Merit had looked at him so strangely when he said that. Only later he realized that it was probably because he’d called the loft  _ home _ .

He hadn’t said a word besides a gruff  _ thank you _ , the next time he headed over to the apothecary’s for Brelyeis’s draught. And Merit, old man bless her, had simply nodded and gotten to work mixing up the newest batch.

 

~ ~ ~

Gradually, naturally, kissing leads them on – to Brelyeis’s hand clutching Kaeh’s shoulder and Kaeh’s hand cupping Brelyeis’s ass, to Kaeh’s fingers sliding teasingly across the warm space between his legs. And this time Brelyeis is the one who breaks away from the kiss, gasping as Kaeh hikes his leg further forward to tuck it over Kaeh’s own hip, to slide Kaeh’s own leg forward into the space that it’s left open. A tiny whine escapes Brelyeis as he slides himself up and down Kaeh’s thigh, right there for him to use, and Kaeh groans, his hands itching to wander as he feels Brelyeis warm against him.

“Please?” he asks – begs – even as he nips gently at Brelyeis’s neck.

“Fine,” Brelyeis gasps, no longer even pretending affront as Kaeh slides his hand down toward the places where his knee had just been rubbing. “Kaehlan!”

“Nnngh.”

Kaeh starts slow, not even quite touching what he’s dying to be touching. Instead, he goes for the insides of Brelyeis’s thighs, tracing languid patterns and soft scratches that gradually make their way further and further inward. Brelyeis’s nails are digging grooves into his shoulders, just the way Kaeh likes them, by the time he finally actually cups Brelyeis close and brushes a questing thumb against his clit.  

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Brelyeis whispers, with an involuntary jerk forward at the touch, and Kaeh grins from where he’s tucked that precious head, that fine hair, right against his own throat.

“Yeah?”

“Yes, you idiot,  _ yeah _ ,” Brelyeis repeats, panting. “Now stop fishing for compliments and –  _ aaaaaaaaah! _ ” His entire body shudders as Kaeh thumbs his clit again, this time in sync with the two fingers rubbing slowly at the sensitive opening just behind it.

“Yeah?” Kaeh checks, not moving beyond the thumb and the rub until Brelyeis actually speaks or nods. He will  _ not _ be that bastard who doesn’t ask, not now and not ever: Brelyeis deserves better than that. Brelyeis deserves a man who won’t do more than embrace him, pull the blanket closer, while he sleeps; a man who never assumes that Brelyeis can see what his lover is offering, and who checks in with him, through touch and word, to make sure that what he wants is what he gets.

Safe, and comfortable, and happy. And if Brelyeis frets about going slow, well – Kaeh is certainly capable of more than one speed, but after everything, he waits to hear or feel Brelyeis asking: as he does now.

They both exhale, soft and a bit shaky, as Kaeh’s fingers slide home.  

“Kaehlan!”

“ _ Brelyeis _ .”

“Nnnnngh.” Brelyeis’s nails dig a little deeper into his shoulders. “Well?”

“ _ Well _ ,” Kaeh promises, his free arm sliding beneath Brelyeis’s shoulder so that he can hold him closer still. “Let’s go?”

He fucks Brelyeis with his fingers, slow and then with increasing speed, trading slightly rougher kisses that are broken only for one or both of them to gasp for breath. And Kaeh hardly notices when one of Brelyeis’s hands leaves his shoulder, but he  _ definitely  _ notices when that hand curls its fingers around his cock: Brelyeis hisses in amused, slightly breathless triumph to feel him shiver at the touch.

“Any – any plans for this?”

“Dun, dunno. You?”

Brelyeis gives him a devilishly light stroke from root to tip for this incomprehensible fragment of a sentence, and Kaeh’s fingers in him falter for the first time. “As in you’re asking me, or as in –  _ aaah  _ – the plan  _ is _ me?”

“Mmmmmnnnngh yes?”

And now it’s Brelyeis who laughs, short and still breathless as he flicks Kaeh’s tip, and Kaeh sinks gentle teeth into his lover’s bicep to keep himself from shouting loud enough to chase off Harmony’s customers downstairs. “Well, then. Go for your plan, my silly idiot.”

That – that is quite explicit enough confirmation for Kaeh, who pulls his fingers free and rolls them both over so that Brelyeis is lying on his back and Kaeh can marvel down at him for a heartbeat or two. “Hi.”

“Hello,” Brelyeis returns, slightly fond even as he taps Kaeh’s cheek. “Now. Anything you planning on doing while you’re up there?”

“Mhmmm.” And Kaeh nods for good measure, just in case Brelyeis can see that too, before taking himself in hand and carefully sliding home.

Brelyeis moans, his head thrown back against the pillows and his hands flying up again to furrow and rake down Kaeh’s shoulders. And Kaeh knows that his mouth, the one hand not holding himself up, have places to be now – he can reach  _ so much _ , from Brelyeis’s chest to his neck and his throat and his collarbone – but even so, he has to take a moment to adjust. His head falls forward against Brelyeis’s shoulder, momentarily overwhelmed.

Brelyeis is  _ alive _ . He’s  _ here _ . He’s  _ with Kaeh. _

They remain this way for a breath, maybe two, before Brelyeis kicks at Kaeh’s back. “Well?’

“ _ Well _ ,” he repeats, already working up a grin as he pulls his head back to smile at Brelyeis. “Time to wake up!”

And Brelyeis doesn’t have time to do more than groan at the terrible, juvenile joke before Kaeh begins to move.

Eventually – once they’ve both come, and Brelyeis has also pushed Kaeh’s head out from between his legs saying that even he needs a breather now – another benefit of this attic loft becomes clear. The smells from Harmony’s bakery permeate even the floors and the inner door that Kaeh always keeps bolted.

“You can’t even smell that a man got fucked up here,” Brelyeis says, sounding tired again but appreciative as he smooths a hand through Kaeh’s hair.

“Really?” Kaeh asks lazily, from where his head is now pillowed on Brelyeis’s belly. “We’ll have to try again later then, hmmm?”

“Maybe, you animal,” Brelyeis mumbles, yawning. “But if I don’t have to move right now, then you can bet your annual pay that I won’t be moving.”

“You don’t have to.” Kaeh presses a kiss to his belly and slowly sits up. “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll bring it right up for you.”

One eyebrow rises. “You’d go down there and face the censure of your landlady after the noise we just made up here?”

Kaeh rather feels like he has to kiss him for that, and so he does, loving how Brelyeis’s arms loop around his neck and shoulders in welcome as he leans down again.

“I’d rather worry about being on your good side than on hers,” Kaeh whispers once they’ve pulled apart.

“Ehh. Or, I suppose, perhaps she has something set up so that her tenants don’t disturb her customers, and vice versa.”

“Maybe.” But his priority being Brelyeis remains true either way, and Kaeh reminds his lover as much even as he tries to remember what the kind of sweet bun that Harmony had offered him that once was called.

And as sweet as it was to have actually woken up with Brelyeis, it is also damn good to be able to come back to him, and to know that neither of them actually needs to leave today if they don’t want to. 

 


	19. dirty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written March 12, 2019

It just slips out, the first time, and Kaeh doesn’t quite realize what he’s said until there’s a heartbeat of complete and utter silence after he’s said it.

“If that’s what you want, sweetheart, then yes.”

He’d just meant for it to be another quiet, earnest sentence – another reassurance, reaffirmation, that whatever Brelyeis wants, Kaeh himself is down for. But as soon as this particular sentence slips out and hangs in the air between them, Brelyeis freezes and turns to face him, brow already furrowing, and Kaeh realizes with alarm that something he hasn’t said before has somehow made it out.

“What did you say?”

Kaeh – panics. He tends to panic when Brelyeis sounds unsure or unhappy, especially when it’s because of Kaeh.

He’s already lost this man once. He can’t – he can’t lose him again. Not for something like this.

“No, no, don’t make that face at me.” In three sure strides, Brelyeis has crossed the room between them. “Don’t you dare, I don’t know, say you’re sorry without even knowing what you’re apologizing for, just because you think that’s what I want to hear. It’s a simple question, Kaehlan. What did you say?”

He’s sitting on the bed, somehow, but he doesn’t know how he got there. And Brelyeis is standing right before him, practically between his legs where they’ve fallen over the edge, but Kaeh can’t look up and face him. Can’t bear to see the moment, if this is it, when Brelyeis decides that his presumption is enough and it’s time for Kaeh to leave.

“I called you sweetheart,” he whispers.

There’s another heartbeat of silence from Brelyeis, plenty of time to let the panic set in a little further, and then Kaeh can’t keep it in anymore.

“I’m sorry, it just came out, I’ll be more careful, I-“

Then two of Brelyeis’s fingers curl together and slip beneath his chin, pushing it up, gentle but inexorable. And Kaeh yields, lets that pressure take him where it will, which seems to be with his mouth closed so that Brelyeis can speak.

“Who made you, a man with more will than a cat and more stubborn strength than a stone, so afraid of a little word?” Brelyeis asks, curious and, if Kaeh’s disbelieving ears catch this aright, slightly breathless.

“I’m not afraid.” That’s not it, that’s not it at all. “Not of that. Words, and all.”

“You aren’t?” Brelyeis prods, and his fingers beneath Kaeh’s chin nudge again, encouraging, until Kaeh is looking up. At him.

Kaeh can feel a small smile threatening to break across his own face. He doesn’t know quite what is happening right now – how much trouble his undue familiarity might cause – but. . .

Seeing Brelyeis makes him happy. It’s – it’s as simple as that.

“I’m not,” he promises Brelyeis, quietly. “Just – don’t ever want you to be unhappy.”

Brelyeis rolls his eyes – something else that never fails to delight Kaeh, who has never seen him do this in front of anyone else. “You can’t control that, idiot. And just  _ guessing _ at what makes me unhappy is not going to work. For instance-“

And then he actually stops, and  _ blushes _ .

Oh.  _ Oh. _

Kaeh is rising to his feet immediately. “For instance, what?”

Whatever Brelyeis says comes out inarticulate, and he’s already turning away, his beautiful skin flushing.

Kaeh has to know. He catches at the hand whose fingers had helped him quiet and listen. “Brelyeis? Please?”

But Brelyeis only shakes his head.

That’s enough of a  _ no _ for Kaeh. “Of course.” He squeezes the hand he’s captured before letting it go, watching it fall right back to Brelyeis’s side. A conversation that they themselves have never actually had – a one-sided conversation that Kaeh only knows existed because the old man had shown it to him, once – echoes in his head.

_ It’s all right. It’s all right. _

Whatever Brelyeis wants now, it’s all right. It  _ has _ to be. This is the only way Kaeh knows of making things all right, the way Brelyeis in another time had promised him with his dying breath that they were.

But in the here and now they remain like this, suspended, for a third heartbeat – Brelyeis, flushed and turned away, on the verge of saying something that might be important, and Kaeh, flushed and hand outstretched, afraid of what he’s said and scared half to death that in his fear he’s missing something else important. But also in the here and now, it’s neither Kaeh nor Brelyeis who breaks the stalemate – they both move in the same breath, Kaeh taking a step forward and Brelyeis turning back all at the same time, both half-laughing as they notice the other and thus realize that they’re not alone in this, this dawning understanding that the other is still there and not about to leave. There’s a moment of clumsy coming-back-together: of arms that rise to wrap around each other’s bodies, of breaths drawn in and blown out against one another’s skin, hair, clothes.

“It’s not the words that frighten me,” Kaeh admits, finally. Having his face buried in Brelyeis’s hair, his arms wrapped around Brelyeis tight, gives him strength. “It’s that you might hear them and hate them. Or hate me, for saying them.”

Brelyeis laughs, short and sharp, against his chest. “To hear you talk, Kaehlan, everything you fear comes back to me. It’s enough to make a man wonder why.”

But he’s not wrong, and Kaeh aches for a good way to tell him so. To tell him that yes of course he frightens Kaeh, but it’s only because Brelyeis himself is good and fair and strong and everything that Kaeh admires, all wrapped up in a single man. To explain to him why it’s a miracle that he lets Kaeh touch him at all, when Kaeh has already wrecked this once by walking away toward some new adventure when he should have been there, stayed there, died there, at Brelyeis’s side where he’d belonged.

Kaeh settles for struggling to explain the one thing he can.

“Because there’s only one kind of words I’m any good at, and they’re. They’re just bed-words.”

Brelyeis’s hair beneath Kaeh’s face shifts a little as Brelyeis turns his head, seizing on the change of subject. “Oh? Sounds promising.”

Kaeh can feel himself flushing, and Brelyeis pokes him in the chest when he keeps quiet. “Well? Tell me about these bed-words of yours, soldier.”

Kaeh  _ shivers. “ _ That’s one of them.” Or at least, Brelyeis has made it into one. The mark of Kaeh’s work, a word he’s had yelled and screamed and hurled at him for centuries, became something else in Orwick, when  _ Brelyeis _ had called him  _ his _ soldier.

And now here he is again, bringing down all of Kaeh’s walls, everything that Kaeh has ever erected to keep himself safe, and however much the fall will hurt someday doesn't even matter. Kaeh welcomes it, in fact.

“Dirty talk, then,” Brelyeis murmurs against his chest. He sighs. “Well. I hate to disappoint you, Kaehlan, but I can’t – I’m no good at that.”

“Mmmmm.” Kaeh’s arms tighten around him, grateful that Brelyeis doesn’t seem angry at least. “Not everyone is good with it, so I – I try to keep it quiet. I’m sorry it slipped out now. Just glad you aren’t angry.”

“Quiet? Kaehlan.  _ Kaehlan _ .” Brelyeis’s voice has changed entirely, and his hands rise from their place clasped around Kaeh’s back. Now he brings them up to lie against Kaeh’s chest and push, putting just enough distance between them that he can look up at Kaeh’s face. But once he’s there he doesn’t seem quite sure how to say whatever he’s going to say. “Kaehlan, I-“

“Mmmmm?” Since Brelyeis is already there, it seems like a damn waste to let the tip of his nose go unkissed. So Kaeh does something about that.

“Kaehlan, I’m serious,” Brelyeis protests. As if a nose kiss made anything less serious! “It’s – ah, it’s all right if you do that.”

“What?” Maybe another nose kiss would clear things up. Worth a try, anyway.

“Are you going to make me spell it out for you?” Brelyeis groans, flushing even as his head falls forward against Kaeh’s chest again. “Of course you are, literal and dogged as you are about boundaries. Fine.  _ Fine.  _ Kaehlan, I don’t mind dirty talk. No, even that probably isn’t going to be enough for you, is it. Fine.  _ Fine _ ! Kaehlan, I  _ like _ dirty talk.”

Kaeh tries – and maybe fails a few times – to process this. “You like hearing it?”

“Yes, you animal,” Brelyeis moans, and the vibrations travel up Kaeh’s body in nice ways, very nice ways. “Please stop asking me about it if you’re not going to do anything with it.”

“Last question, I promise.”

“It better be, I swear, or else I will destroy this room and everything in it, including you.”

“Hot,” Kaeh murmurs, pressing a kiss to the top of his head since the tip of Brelyeis’s nose is no longer accessible. “But, just to check – the  _ sweetheart  _ was ok, just surprising?”

Brelyeis unleashes a stream of elegant, beautifully phrased elvish curses right against his chest, and Kaeh shivers at the weight and heat, the  _ promise _ , of them. But still he waits, quiet and patient, until Brelyeis actually answers him.

And eventually the curses peter out. “Yes, you idiot,” Brelyeis confirms, quietly. “It was just surprising.”

“ _ Good _ ,” Kaeh says, and this time he’s the one who pulls back just enough to get a different kind of grip, hefting Brelyeis off the floor with a quiet grunt. And this way Kaeh also gets to see the second of shock that crosses Brelyeis’s face when the word is in elvish too, just like Brelyeis’s curses, and Kaeh’s smile is already returning as he walks them back across the three, four steps to Brelyeis’s bed.

“ _ You didn’t think I spoke this _ ,” he guesses, coming to a stop when his knees touch the edge of the bed where he’d been seated just moments ago.

“ _ No _ ,” Brelyeis admits, still in elvish as well. “ _ I don’t know why I didn’t, when you’re certainly an elf too, I wouldn’t have said all that if I knew you’d understand it, I-“ _

_ “You’re flustered.”  _ Kaeh beams up at him. One of the hands that’s on Brelyeis’s ass, holding him up, slides inward just a little so that Kaeh’s fingers tease at the seat of his trousers, right at the crack.

_ “Oh I am?”  _ Brelyeis asks, slightly breathless. He hooks his ankles behind Kaeh’s back, rolling his hips into him a little at the touch.

“ _ Your sentences get all short and muddled.”  _ Kaeh strains up for another peck on his nose. “ _ I love it _ .”

“ _ Still not going to talk dirty to you _ .”

“ _ No need. That’s my job now, I hear _ .” Kaeh lowers him to the bed, and Brelyeis, catching the hint, unhooks his ankles and lets himself be spread out across the duvet. Kaeh admires him there like that for a breath – flushed and panting, fine white hair spread around him like a halo – before diving in for a proper kiss, lying half across him.

_ “Ah ah, no more, sweetheart,” _ he whispers, dipping down against Brelyeis’s neck instead when Brelyeis whines and lifts his face for another kiss.  _ “Turns out I need my mouth free tonight so I can tell you what a handsome creature you are.” _

“You are an absolute menace,” Brelyeis gasps in Common.

Kaeh grins against the column of his neck.  _ “And you are the most perfect man I have ever met. Undo your shirt for me, sweetheart?” _

“Thought you liked doing that yourself?” Brelyeis complains shakily, but his hands have already risen and he’s fumbling over his buttons with suddenly clumsy fingers.

“ _ I do,”  _ Kaeh promises him, refusing to take the bait and switch back to Common. “ _ Really, really do. It’s like opening a gift, except when you rip open the paper oh fuck there’s a neck and a collarbone and the most stunning set of tits you’ve ever seen, right there in your face.”  _ As 

Brelyeis moans, fingers stilling on the buttons about halfway through, Kaeh slides a hand down this path of newly-revealed skin, slipping beneath the half-buttoned shirt to find one of the aforementioned tits and squeeze it, gently.

“ _ A good, soft, warm handful of tit,”  _ he whispers into Brelyeis’s ear, nipping at the lobe.  _ “Fuck, I love how I can spread my fingers and the whole thing is in my hand.”  _ Kaeh suits action to word, showing how palm and fingers form a perfect cradle before sliding his hand beneath the tit to cup it and bounce it: they both watch how the peaking nipple creates a little groove beneath Brelyeis’s shirt, and Brelyeis moans.

“ _ Sweetheart, it feels so good, I want it in my mouth so bad but your shirt’s in the way!” _ Kaeh tells him, mock complaining as he moves from Brelyeis’s ear back to his neck with a soft bite. Brelyeis starts, as if he hadn’t realized he’d stopped unbuttoning, and when he starts wrestling with the buttons again Kaeh rewards this initiative with a pinch to the nipple. Brelyeis swallows some louder sound.  

“ _ And fuck, I love it when you wear my shirts _ ,” he whispers, watching Brelyeis keep unbuttoning.  _ “I love how they’re too big, how they hide these lovely tits until I get up close, pull your arms above your head and kiss you, watch the neckline fall down and create a pretty little window for me to look right in on everything that’s hiding beneath it. And fuckin’ hells, Brelyeis, when the whole thing rides up, and you didn’t wear anything because that shirt was big enough that it made you decent when you had your arms down? Brelyeis – baby, sweetheart – I could die, it makes me so happy.” _

“You need to do the rest,” Brelyeis demands, breathless, as he abandons the buttons and one of his hands slides down his own body, between his legs.

_ “I will,” _ Kaeh promises, leaning up on one elbow. He has to abandon the uncovered tit in order to capture that wandering hand, but the grab is worth the effort as he brings that hand up to his mouth instead.  _ “In a minute, mmm?”  _ He turns Brelyeis’s hand to face him, pressing a kiss to each fingertip before curling the fingers closed and kissing the knuckles, then uncurling them open and worshipping the first two together like he would one of Brelyeis’s cocks.

_ “Kaehlan, please!” _

It’s strange, but good, to hear his name – even that weird and too-formal full version – in a tongue that Kaeh doesn’t often hear it in. He pulls off Brelyeis’s fingers with a pop and grins down at him before releasing the hand to its destination and leaning over to finish on the buttons.

_ “Another thing I like? How your skin shows my kisses. This pretty purple, here beneath your clothes as you go about your day.” _ He breaks off to suck a trail of them, warm and wet down Brelyeis’s chest with a quick detour and an apologetic kiss for the tit he hadn’t played with earlier.

Brelyeis is shifting beneath him now with little noises of arousal and impatience. “Is this the best dirty talk you can manage, Kaehlan?” he demands, back in Common. As if he isn’t breathless listening to it. As if he isn’t squirming, the tracks of Kaeh’s mouth on his skin shining slick in the last of the evening’s light through his windows.

_ “Mmmmm?” _ Kaeh adjusts himself so that the lower halves of their bodies are pressed together, trapping Brelyeis’s hand where it is and letting him feel the growing bulge in Kaeh’s own pants.  _ “You don’t like hearing how fucking gorgeous you are, what I like to do to you?” _

“You haven’t told me what you want to do to me,” Brelyeis challenges him.

_ “Mmmmm.” _ He pretends to be thinking about this even as he grinds himself down against Brelyeis, and they both moan at the friction. Kaeh has to roll away for a minute, sit up and pull his own shirt over his head, his own trousers down his legs, before coming back to push the two halves of Brelyeis’s shirt apart, spread like wings on either side of him across the bed as Kaeh goes to work on his pants.

He muses aloud as he does.

_ “I think you know I want to fuck you,” _ he says, as casually as he can when he’s ass naked in this man’s bed and busily working towards making sure that Brelyeis himself soon is too.  _ “Want to slide my fingers up and down between your legs for a while, feel how wet you get and hear how much you like that. Love to hear you enjoying yourself, Brelyeis, love it so much, I just can’t. . . Want to slip them into you then, crook ‘em up a bit. Thumb your clit up top, and inside find that sweet spot you like so much, play with you awhile and make you come on me, yeah?” _

The pants are finally off, exposing a lean pair of legs and a neat patch of hair at their juncture. With a low, wordless moan, Kaeh scoots himself down the bed, limiting himself to one nudging greeting of his nose against Brelyeis’s clit before lying his head against Brelyeis’s abdomen and letting his fingers do exactly as he’d described before. And all the while he keeps talking, low and pleased over the soft wet sounds of Brelyeis’s pleasure.

_ “Could do this for hours, sweetheart, hours and hours and hours. . . Wanna get my mouth on you too, that’s my favorite, love to taste you, love to feel you coming all over me, but then you know you couldn’t hear me talking because you’d be smothering me. Your thighs clapped tight around my ears, your hands tight in my hair, your hips driving you up to meet me. I’d be drowning in you, Brelyeis, and you’re so good I could die down there and I’d be happy, it’d be one of the best ways I could go, completely surrounded by you.” _

Brelyeis makes a noise like he’s about to counter this, call Kaeh ridiculous, but then his back is arching off the bed: Kaeh got the angles right.  _ “Kaehlan!” _

_ “Do this long enough and I’d come too, without ever feeling you on my cock,”  _ he admits.  _ “But if that’s something you wanted and we got there – oh fuck, Brelyeis, there are so many things I would want to do with you. That I  _ **_do_ ** _ want to do with you. Spread you out, just like this, only it’s your head over the edge instead of your legs. Or else, open you up with my mouth and then slide into you, fuck you slow and feel your nails on my back. Fill my hands full of your beautiful hair. My mouth with anything you’ll let me have. My ears with your moans and my nose with your scent and my eyes with you, you, all of you.” _

Beneath his hand and his words, Brelyeis shakes to his finish with a wordless moan, and Kaeh gentles him through it, fingers on the outside now, just smoothing up and down until Brelyeis knees his arm away and reaches down for his cock with a deft grip that leaves Kaeh gasping.

“You speak far more easily in elvish than you do in Common,” Brelyeis observes, afterward.

“Not – not really.”

“No?” Brelyeis rolls to face him with a small groan of satisfaction. “Then please, explain the whirlwind of words I was just treated to, hmm?”

“Bed-words. Told you I’m better with them than anything else.” And what Kaeh doesn’t say is,  _ Also, I’m better with you than with anyone else. _

“Ridiculous,” Brelyeis snorts, moving closer and imperiously pulling Kaeh’s arm over his shoulders like a blanket.

“Yes,” Kaeh whispers in agreement, making sure he also pulls up the actual blanket before letting his arm be pulled wherever Brelyeis wants it. “Sweetheart.”

And when Brelyeis flushes again, Kaeh doesn’t mention it this time, only cuddles him closer and sighs, completely content.  


End file.
